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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.
The Waters - Gilmour Wars
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!
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.
Update March 2014: The Holy Church found out who the mystery
woman is on the Fart Enjoy booklet and pinpointed the real date that the
booklet was created (and that is quite a surprise). Just another world
exclusive of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit: Smart
Enjoy.
Have you ever seen President Sarkozy
on the telly giving a speech? He always thinks he is doing a bloody
Hamlet. His performances, because that is what he thinks they are,
remind me more of Louis
de Funès (or for the non-Francophiles among us: Benny Hill)
than Napoleon Bonaparte, another one of those short short-tempered
little men with a short fuse who think they can rule the world.
This post contains a fairly well hidden review of the Pink Floyd
biography Pigs Might Fly by Mark Blake.
Contents: 1. Flamingoes might fly, about
the very first Pink Floyd biography, written in French, by Jean-Marie
Leduc. 2. Floydstuff, a rant about merchandising
and tribute albums. 3. Pigs Might Fly, review of
the Mark Blake biography. 4. A final word about
Jean-Marie Leduc.
Flamingoes might fly
Eloquence is a French way of speech but that was not what I was thinking
of when I read the following, decades ago:
Je ne sais qui doit le plus à l’autre! La France ou le Pink Floyd? Le
Pink Floyd peut-être. (translation) I don’t know who owes the
other more! France or Pink Floyd? Pink Floyd perhaps.
The above is the start of a French rock biography (1977 edition), called Pink
Floyd, written by Rock & Folk journalist Jean-Marie Leduc
and issued by Albin
Michel. Rock
& Folk was an excellent French music magazine, that started in
1966, hence its name, and that wanted to inform the French public from
the new trends in modern pop music. Jean-Marie Leduc hopped to London
and wrote several articles about the London Underground music scene and
le pouvoir des fleurs. He discovered this incredible band that would
soon be the French progressive student movement’s darling,lePink Floyd.
Although the most common language at London at that time was the
language of love it would’ve helped Jean-Marie Leduc a little bit if he
had actually understood some English. Which he didn’t. Probably the acid
didn’t help either. That didn’t stop him to write a Pink Floyd biography
that was published in October 1973, and that could still be found, a
decade later, in every bookstore and self-respecting newspaper and
magazine shop in France. Selling figures nearly must have achieved the
same height as a regular Pink Floyd album; Leduc’s Pink Floyd was an
instant classic and a steady seller.
It was also full of blunders. At page 19 Leduc wrongly mistakes the Pink Flamingo
club for the band and throughout the book he will name the lads le
Flamant Rose. This (wrong) translation was taken over by all French
rock magazines and it would take Rock & Folk until July 1994 to
officially denounce the rumour that a Pink Floyd is a Phoenicopterus
Roseus. Another botch is on page 49 where Leduc claims that...
...le 2 novembre (1967) (…) un nouveau simple du groupe
“Apologises / Jugband blues” est commercialisé en Angleterre’.
(translation) on the 2nd of November (1967) (...) a new single of the
band is released in England: “Apologises / Jugband blues” .
This one simple sentence has made French speaking Pink Floyd fans look
for this non-existent track of the band for over a decade. At the end of
the book the mistake is repeated at the discography, Jean-Marie Leduc
keeps on maintaining that the Floyd’s third single was Jugband
blues / Apologies (please note the different orthography and running
order).
Update November 2011: it was later cleared out that once again it
had been Leduc's extended knowledge of the English language that made
him misunderstand 'Apples and Oranges' for 'Apologies' or 'Apologises'.
Jean-Marie Leduc’s biography was probably the very first biography on
the band, as Charles
Beterams wrote in the Echoes, a Dutch fan club magazine, and despite
the mistakes it also contains a stunning revelation about the bands
first recording, forgotten by most of the biographies that would come
next. Leduc interviewed Nick Mason in 1973 and asked if Astronomy
Domine was the Floyd’s first composition. Mason answered (translated
from French back into English):
Not true. Our first composition was titled Lucy Lee in blue tight
or something similar. We recorded it on acetate but it was never
commercialised.
Once again Jean-Marie Leduc’s average knowledge of the English language
made him note the song as Lucy Lee, and not as Lucy
Leave, although Nick Mason’s pronunciation of the song title
may not have been too comprehensible as well. It would take ages for
another journalist to re-discover the truth about the band’s first
recording.
Floydstuff
One bloke who does remember Lucy Leave is Mark Blake. In 2007 he wrote a
Pink Floyd biography entitled Pigs Might Fly but because I am such a
stingy money spender I wanted to wait until the paperback came
sailplaning to me. The last couple of years it is raining Pink Floyd
related books and accessories as if all kind of shady people want to
have their free ride on the gravy train. It is of course a double
feeling, here we are Pink Floyd fans wanting to know everything (and we
mean everything) on the band but on the other hand we feel as if we are
inside an orange squeezer (or to use Gerald
Scarfe’s weird world of Floydian symbolism: a meat
grinder). The last thing I’ve read on Pink Floyd merchandising is
that Converse
will bring out a range of shoes
based on the cover art of three of their albums. Part of me is yelling
yuck!, but another part is jumping up and down, not a pretty sight if
you would catch me on my webcam.
About a decade ago, perhaps a bit longer, small record companies
suddenly discovered the tribute album. I jumped on it as a hungry louce
on a passing German shepherd dog. But when my heap of tribute records,
all made to honestly commemorate the band and not to make a quick buck,
started to become bigger than my genuine Pink Floyd collection I simply
gave up. I think that Babies
Go Pink Floyd was the last tribute album I bought, partially because
the concept attracted me. If you also feel tempted to listen to it. Don’t. Not
only the record is tripe and you wouldn’t want to confront any baby with
it without giving him or her a lifelong phobia for Pink Floyd music but
also it doesn’t actually motivates grown-ups either to start
procreating, normally a quite amusing and satisfactory pastime.
Recently I found this add from Dwell
records that goes something like this:
The biggest names in hard rock and avant-garde metal have come together
to pay tribute to the madcap genius of Syd Barrett. Featuring some of
heavy-metals most influential players, this is a hard-rocking trip
through the music world’s most idiosyncratic minds.
Some of the bands present on the record are the following: Dreg, Giant
Squid, Jarboe, Kylesa and my favourite Stinking Lizaveta. Except in some
distant Norwegian fjordic regions where these bands are probably world
famous amongst the local satanic
black metal scene these bands don’t really merit the eptitheton
‘biggest name in hard rock’ to begin with. I would have written the add
for this album a little bit less triumphant:
Several virtually unknown hard rock and avant-garde metal bands that are
constantly struggling to have a record contract have come together to
rip off the musical heritage of Syd Barrett. Featuring some of
heavy-metals obscurest players, this is a fruitless hard-rocking trip
trying to get a fan-base that exceeds the dozen.
Now that is what I call a more realistic description of the project. You
can listen to the songs at MySpace
and I have to confess they don’t all sound like rubbish to me.
But all the above was merely a long, way too long, way to say that I
quit buying Pink Floyd tribute records a while ago as most were, are and
will be… full of crap. I had the same compulsive buying disorder when it
came to Pink Floyd related music magazines and books. Despite the fact
that I can’t play guitar I have dozens of guitar magazines that promise
you the tablature of the third guitar solo in Comfortably Numb and a
brand new exclusive Pink Floyd interview that was in fact already
published in another guitar magazine from three years before that I
already had in my scrapbook.
I define myself more than the average Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett fan,
but less than an anorak, fanorak suits me fine.. Anoraks have the
tendency to start flame wars because someone has told that Syd Barrett
was wearing green socks on the 7th of August 1967 while every aficionado
knows he was wearing brown socks that day. (To avoid death threats: I’ve
just made this whole sock-thing up, but the 7th of August 1967 was of
course an important day in Floydian history, about the importance of
green socks, just check David Gilmour’s inside sleeve of his About Face
album and shiver.)
So I quit buying Pink Floyd books as well, more or less… the last I
bought was The
Rough Guide To Pink Floyd that can now be found at local lo-price
bookshops for the third of the price I bought it for. That is a very
nice Pink Floyd biography by the way, and if you are in search for one,
well don’t hesitate and get it. It’s cheap and cheerful.
Pigs Might Fly
But this post was originally intended as a review of Pigs Might Fly, a
Pink Floyd biography by Mark
Blake and all I did until now is take the piss out of:
a) the very first Pink Floyd biography by Jean-Marie Leduc; b) the
various tribute cds that do exist; c) the growing pile of Pink Floyd
biographies…
So I had given up buying Pink Floyd biographies but when I wrote on the
Late Night forum that nobody had ever tried to locate Syd’s girlfriend
we know as Iggy Mark Blake promptly replied
that he certainly had. I more or less apologised and answered that I
would read his biography.
So I did.
Who am I to post a review about a book that Record
Collector choose as book of the year, that Q
magazine described as a ‘detailed, orderly, first-rate read’, while Mojo
praised its ‘heroic research’. It’s excellent, well written, full of
anecdotes and it seems to please the casual and the more ardent fan of
the band, although it still forgets to mention the colour of socks Syd
Barrett was wearing on the 7th of August 1967. Anoraks will always find
something to grumble about. I did. I found a mistake from microscopical
importance about the Publius
affair but only people daft enough to look for the Enigma mystery will
probably realise that.
A while ago I started a side-project called the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit. In it I am looking for the whereabouts of
the girl who appeared on the cover of the Syd Barrett album The
Madcap Laughs. It is rather amazing how many bits and pieces can be
found after all these years, but apparently Iggy was quite a character
in those flowery powery days. The time was ripe as other people
suddenly started to reveal their Iggy memories, amongst them Anthony
Stern who made a four-minute movie about her in the Sixties that was
premiered this year.
I wrote some things about Iggy that I thought were revolutionary but
apparently Mark Blake had unravelled these before in his biography, only
he didn’t need as many space to write these things down than I did and
if this review goes on like this it might be longer than the book itself.
On page 140 Mark Blake writes about how Iggy performed The Bend (Church
article: Bend
It!), on the next page he reveals the existence of the Anthony Stern
movie (before it became an item on YouTube)
and how she used to go dancing at The Orchid in Purley (Church article: Shaken
not stirred). And all this a year before the Church was started and
something of an Iggy hype was created. Hats off to Mark Blake.
Mark Blake is not only an accurate but also a beautiful writer (I’m not
speaking about his physical appearance here), reading the bit about the
Live 8 reunion gave me tears in my eyes although I normally only weep
when I read sweet little things about dying puppies. That more or less
sums it up really; Pigs Might Fly moved me and I thank Mark Blake a lot
for that.
(In America the book has been published under the alternative title
Comfortably Numb, this was the working title of the book but as the
cover has a snapshot from Battersea Power Station, including flying pig
balloon, this was changed
for the European market.)
A final word about Jean-Marie Leduc
One of the funnier parts of the very first Pink Floyd biography are the
translated song texts. The Floyd’s first album is called Le
joueur de flûte aux grilles de l’aube, but my favourite
still is a song that is called Bonbons et pain aux raisins. And
what to think about the following, I let you guess what song this has
been taken from:
De tortueux signes voltigent. Lueur. Lueur. Lueur. Fla. Pom. Pom. Escaliers
d’épouvante et lois de mort…
And a final word for collectors
If you are looking for a copy of the Pink Floyd book by Jean-Marie Leduc
be sure to buy the Albin Michel / Rock & Folk versions (several editions
from 1973 till 1983). In 1987 another book by Jean-Marie Leduc, also
called Pink Floyd, and in the same mini format, was presented to the
public by Le Club Des Stars / Seghers. Although based upon the previous
versions this book has been completely rewritten and most of the errors
have been edited out.
(More scans of the Jean-Marie Leduc biographies can be found on our
Tumblr: Jean-Marie
Leduc.)
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Fasten
Your Anoraks (The lyrics above are Leduc's French
translation of Astronomy Domine.)
The best Pink Floyd book I've read in years is of course Mark
Blake's Pigs Might Fly. Don't tell this to his friends and relatives
but I know from a reliable source that he prays at the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit from time to time.
The funniest book about the Floyd are the memoirs, not of Nick gentleman
drummer boy Mason, although they are good for a chuckle or two, crusty
apple pie indeed, but those of Guy
Pratt. About a third of My Bass and Other Animals colours
pink as Guy joined the diet Floyd, although diet was not exactly the
right word to describe the intake of Mr. Gilmour at that time, on their A
Momentary Lapse of Reason world tour. Pratt has a very weird kind of
humour and one of his pranks was an attempt to crash the Pink Floyd tour
plane by frantically running up and down the corridor, in mid-flight!
Normal bands have a tour bus; Pink Floyd has a tour plane and the
drummer was flying it. If you don’t want to read the book, you can watch
an interview
where Guy tells about his Floydian encounters.
The best, best as in anoraky, Syd Barrett biography is Julian Palacios' Lost
in the Woods, he is a silly bugger if you ask me as he invited the
Church on the SBRS
forum. Around this time a second (more condensed, I’m afraid) version of
his book should finally appear. So far for this commercial break-up.
Speaking about Barretthings, the amount of Syd related books is slowly
overhauling the man’s solo output and recently two new ones (in French)
have made it onto my desk. Written by Jean-Michel
Espitallier, Syd Barrett, le rock et autres trucs, looked the
most promising. It doesn't claim to be a biography but a personal
rendition, part essay, of a French Barrett connoisseur.
In my opinion France and rock go together like Germany and humour, Italy
and efficiency, Belgium and world soccer finales but this one, I hoped,
could be an exception as Mr. Jean-Michel Espitallier is not only is a
devoted Barrett fan, but also the translator of the French edition of
Tim Willis' Madcap biography, a renowned minor poet
(dixit Francis
Xavier Enderby) and drummer of the French rock band Prexley?
(although that last is not exactly a reference, see above).
The title is a nice pun, un jeu de mots, as it can be interpreted
as rock and other stuff but also as rock and other tricks.
That is why I preferred to start with this tome instead of the other
French Barrett book lying on my desk, called The First Pink Floyd,
already deserving the price for lamest title of the year.
Stuff & tricks
It is 30 November 2004 and Jean-Michel Espitallier is nervously
strolling around St. Margaret’s Square hoping to get a glimpse of the
man who was once known as Syd but now prefers to be called Roger. When
Syd-Roger drives by (in his sister's car) and the vehicle has to stop at
the crossroads - I deliberately use this term here - where Jean-Michel
is sitting on a bench, both men meet in the eye and both pretend, for a
couple of minutes, not to see the other one. This anecdote sets the tone
of the book, marvellously described by the drummer who can't hide his
poetic roots. Strong stuff. Nice trick.
I once remarked at the, now defunct, Astral Piper forum that I couldn’t
understand the romantic feelings some female Barrett fans had for Syd. I
mean, this guy was a slightly disturbed diabetic senior and if I should
have asked them to have a fling with my grandfather they would’ve been
insulted… Espitallier is aware of this dichotomy and compares Syd
Barrett to Peter Pan. Syd was a Cambridge youngster who refused to grow
up and died in the early Seventies when he, like Icarus, reached for the
sky too soon. After all these years, fans were still hoping to find a
glimpse of Syd, although only Roger had survived.
From old aged Roger it goes to old aged rock. Espitallier makes the
point that we have forgotten about the My
Lai massacre but only remember its soundtrack. Good Morning
Vietnam has turned into an infomercialised cd-compilation (I have a Tour
Of Duty TV-Shop-six-pack myself). Television documentaries use The
Mamas and The Papas to comment napalm
warfare. We look at a vintage take of an American soldier who has just
placed a bullet through a women’s head but all we discuss is Suzy Q by
the Creedence Clearwater Revival. Although the above is not
really new, innovative or original, it is good to see it in print from
time to time.
Infotainment
Jean-Michel Espitallier is not always well informed. I can forgive him
that he mistakes the Dutch designer
duo Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koger for a couple of Germans but
when it comes to Syd some facts should better have been checked before
putting it into print. That Mick Rock did not shoot the cover
of The Madcap Laughs is perhaps stuff for anoraks (Mick Rock
himself has more or less hinted he was behind it anyway, a fact that
Storm Thorgerson denies) but the story that, shortly before his death,
Syd Barrett found a guitar from his brother-in-law and started strumming
it can be found in the Mike Watkinson & Pete Anderson Crazy
Diamond biography, that appeared 15 years before Syd Barrett passed
away. And that particular anecdote probably dated already from a few
years before it went into print. There are so many myths about Syd
Barrett that one doesn’t need to create new ones.
It is perhaps understandable, the man is a poet and not a biographer.
His book is about the Barrett phenomenon and not about the historical
Barrett.
Lost in translation
Jean-Michel Espitallier writes : Il y a la musique qui nous rentre
dans le cerveau musical et il y a la musique qui passe directement dans
la poitrine…
Espitallier not only has been hit in the stomach by Syd’s music but
received some hits on the head as well, resulting in some serious brain
damage. He heard his first Syd song in 1973 and remembers it as Babe
Lemonade; actually it is Baby Lemonade. And Jean-Michel’s lethargic
song title memories keep on going on. Barrett’s James Joyce adaptation
is baptized Golden Air (not Hair) and Syd’s final Pink Floyd
statement Jugband Blues is changed to Jugband Blue. A couple of
decades ago I started reading a promising French novel but quit after a
dozen pages because the author kept on insisting on a Beatles’ song
called Eleanor Rugby. Things like that make me grind my teeth. It
makes me even wonder if Jean-Michel Espitallier is a real Barrett fan or
a mere fraud trying to cash in, like a few others, on the Barrett
legacy. For Ig’s sake, it just takes a 10 seconds look on a record
sleeve to see if a title has been noted down without mistakes.
Arthur Rambo
The book ends with a list of creative geniuses who stopped being
creative at a certain point in their lives. One of these persons is the
19th century poet Arthur
Rimbaud, who stopped writing at 21 and proclaimed: Merde à la
poésie! I would like to end this review with: Merde au poète!
But let’s have a look at the pros and cons of his Syd-hiking first (bad
pun, I know)…
Pros: instead of the umpteenth biography this book is a personal
journey from the author through music, art and literature, using the
Barrett legend as a guide. Interesting viewpoints about music, fandom,
culture and politics are intertwined with nice wordplays such as ‘Bob
Dylan had a Plan Baez’.
Cons: actually Jean-Michel Espitallier gets more Barrett song
titles wrong than he gets them right. At a certain moment I even thought
he did it on purpose, the man is a poet after all.
I used to have this philosophy teacher who subtracted points from our
exam results if we made spelling mistakes. Although we were angry with
the man in those days I can now see he had a point (our points,
actually). So out of 10, Syd Barrett, le rock et autres trucs gets
an 8 for its content, but I feel obliged to subtract at least 5
points for its many mistakes.
Suddenly...
...it is silent in here. Did a poet pass or did someone fart?
Espitallier, Jean-Michel: Syd Barrett, le rock et autres trucs,
Editions Philippe
Rey, Paris, 2009, 192 pages, 17 €.
Note: This book grew out of an essai radiophonique
Jean-Michel Espitallier gave on radiostation France Culture on 4
November 2007. Called Syd Barrett Quand Même it can be found
on the (interesting) French Floyd fansite Seedfloyd.
Webbrowser version: http://www.seedfloyd.fr/article/syd-barrett-quand-meme.
Direct downloads in MP3 or WMA format can be found on the same page.
In a new Syd Barrett biography
that was recently published in France its author, Emmanuel Le Bret, can
get quite lyrical from time to time. How this reacts, interferes or
enriches the biography is a question that will be further investigated
in our review to be published here in a while (see: Barrett:
first in space!). But the Church can’t of course not
ignore some Iggy statements to be found in a chapter well spend on The
Madcap Laughs:
La cinquième chanson est Dark Globe (Sphère Sombre),
un titre inspiré du Seigneur Des Anneaux. C’est l’un des moments les
plus forts de l’album, une chanson où Barrett démontre une fois encore
ses talents d’écriture.
The fifth song is Sphère Sombre (Dark Globe), a title
inspired by Lord Of The Rings. It is one of the strongest moments of the
album, a song where Barrett can once again demonstrate his writing
talents…
Then, in fine French tradition, starts an in-depth review of some of the
themes to be found in Dark Globe. What to think of the following:
Il y a une allusion à la drogue (l’opium que l’on fume allongé) et qui
explique le vers suivant: « Ma tête embrassa la surface de la Terre. »
Quant à « La personne enchaînée à une Esquimaude », c’est bien sûr Syd
qui vit épisodiquement avec Iggy, moitié Inuit!
There is an allusion to the drug opium that is smoked lying on the floor
and that explains the following verse: “my head kissed the ground”. “I'm
only a person with Eskimo chain” is of course about his short episode
with Iggy, who was half Inuit!
The opium reference is quite far-fetched and the head down / ground
image symbolism can be found in several Syd songs: I'll lay my head
down and see what I see - Love Song She loves to see me get down to
ground - She Took A Long Cold Look Creep into bed when your head's on
the ground - It Is Obvious.
That the Eskimo Chain verse could refer to Ig is something that the
Church has wondered about before in When
Syd met Iggy... (Pt. 3) , but according to JenS, who knew both Iggy
and Syd in the Sixties this is quite a preposterous idea:
Syd wrote songs and not all of them were about one person or another. It
was his job. His songs were more often a jumble of ideas put together
to serve his purpose. I think it’s risky, even though you like the idea,
to project this as it just leads to further mythologizing. Syd was not
romantically inclined this way. “I'm only a person with Eskimo chain”
refers to the evolutionary chain, not to a specific person. He was on a
very much higher spiritual plane, not so much on the material. I find
this idea quite funny and I just hear Syd roaring with laughter.
But Emmanuel Le Bret mythologizes, to use JenS’ discourse, even a bit
further…
Le célèbre vers « J’ai tatoué mon cerveau », qui fit les gorges chaudes
de journaux à sensation, possède un pouvoir évocateur exceptionnel.
Parmi les nombreux sens qu’on peut lui donner, n’oublions pas que, dans
la tradition shamanique Inuit , il existe une tradition du tatouage
(comme chez les Maoris) qui consiste à se tatouer le crâne en bleu. L’on
peut interpréter ces mots comme l’allusion à un rite initiatique pour
rentrer dans la « famille » d’Iggy.
The famous verse ‘I tattooed my brain all the way’, which was a splendid
headline for the tabloids, has an extraordinary evocative power. Of all
the significances one can find, we may not forget, that in Inuit
shamanic tradition, there is a tattooing tradition (as with the Maori)
to tattoo the skull in blue. One could interpret these words as an
allusion to the ritual initiation to enter Iggy’s ‘family’.
Lars
Krutak, an anthropologist who specializes in body adornments, has
written about Inuit tattoos:
Arctic tattoo was a lived symbol of common participation in the cyclical
and subsistence culture of the arctic hunter-gatherer. Tattoo recorded
the “biographies” of personhood, reflecting individual and social
experience through an array of significant relationships that oscillated
between the poles of masculine and feminine, human and animal, sickness
and health, the living and the dead. Arguably, tattoos provided a nexus
between the individual and communally defined forces that shaped Inuit
and Yupiget perceptions of existence… (Taken from: Vanishing
Tattoo. An updated version of the same article can be found at: Lars
Krutak.)
Although all the writings of Lars Krutak are very interesting it would
take us to far to dig further into the specifics of tribal tattooing.
Further more, regardless of the fact that ‘Eskimo chain’
may well or not refer to Iggy, who may have acted as a muse for Syd,
rather than the groupie some biographers have made of her, she probably
was not Inuit at all.
And as far as the Reverend can see, with his little piggy eyes, he
cannot distinguish any tattoos on her body.
Update: some of the above post is redundant as it has been
established that Ig has got no Eskimo roots whatsoever: Little
old lady from London-by-the-Sea
Sources (other than internet links mentioned above):
Le Bret, Emmanuel : Syd Barrett. Le premier Pink Floyd., Editions
du Moment, Paris, 2008, p.210-211. (Translations from French to English
done by the Reverend.)
I was pretending to be very busy at Atagong mansion and so the review
for the most recent French Syd Barrett biography, Syd Barrett, le
premier Pink Floyd by Emmanuel Le Bret vegetated in that
small Bermuda triangle called 'My Documents' for a while.
Right after I had read the book my opinion about French authors was as
follows. I give you an unpublished exclusive excerpt from my first draft:
As long as French biographers keep on insisting that les
Pink Floyd is part of their national treasury just because David Gilmour
had a fling with BB
once they will need to be hunted down by a mob of critics armed with
boiling tar and blood stained feathers.
According to the credits on the back cover Emmanuel Le Bret is not only
a Sixties collector and connoisseur but also a well known lecturer,
although in French this is described as a conférencier what
is not exactly the same. Anyway and this is a cheap blow under the belt,
I apologize beforehand, a search on the world wide web doesn’t reveal
any of his performing qualities to me but perhaps he only reads at
private parties.
Syd Barrett, le premier Pink Floyd, is not Emmanuel Le Bret's first book
so tells me Google. He debuted with an esoteric study about Uranus,
a subject he knows more about than you dare to imagine. I could add in a joke
or two here, but I won't. Uranus is not something one makes jokes about,
unless you're from Klingon
territory.
The biographical planet orbits between two opposing points. At the
sinister side all attention goes to meticulously verified, double
verified and triple verified facts. This does not always lead to
readable books, I'm afraid. Spiralling at the other side are those who
will not hesitate to add a good, albeit probably untrue, anecdote
because it goes down so well. They probably think they're writing telenovelas
instead.
Legendary nonsense
Emmanuel Le Bret certainly admires the second biographical viewpoint.
Several times he warns us, the innocent reader, not to give too many
attention to the many legends around Syd Barrett and continues then by
giving us a page and a half of the wildest rumours circling around about
the madcap. Some of these were even unknown to me but this could be due
to the French and their legendary lust for the baroque and the
bizarre. It took them until the mid nineties to finally understand that
Pink Floyd wasn't a bird
so one juicy Syd rumour more or less can't hurt Emmanuel must have
thought. Le Bret is as passionate about the rock star as he is
passionate about Uranus and this shows in the many sentences that end
with an exclamation mark! Like this!! And that!!! And
then just another one when you least expect it!!!! French love
this kind of stuff as you can see in their many movie comedies filled
with screaming people who keep on smashing doors.
If you want to know what the general tone of the book is, I invite you
to read the following post that I found at the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit. The author of that blog is a complete
nutter, ready for the strap jacket, but I can follow the Reverend in
what he has to say about Syd Barrett, le premier Pink Floyd: Tattoo
You. (Note: this review was originally posted at Felix Atagong's Unfinished
Projects.)
I am now also pretty sure that the French lack the proper DNA string
that give other nationalities the magic force to copy and paste English
words. For fuck's sake how moronic do you need to be to keep on
insisting throughout the entire book that Syd's one time girlfriend is
named Libby Gausdeen or that David Gilmour's early band is called
Jocker's Wild?
There must be a zillion Internet joints, from Albania to Zambia, where
they do manage to spell these names right, except in France. I made a
list of the dozens of spelling mistakes in the book, and boys and the
one single Nordic girl reading this blog, you are lucky that it has
disappeared mysteriously from my harddisk, and I am too fed up to look
for them again. Spoken about a narrow escape!
One could say that Emmanuel Le Bret writes English like officer Crabtree
(from Allo
Allo fame) speaks French (I know that this blog is not spotless
either but we Belgians are semi-French anyway).
One time I really had to laugh out loud and that was when le brat
re-baptises the hippy couple Jock and Sue, you know those hipsters that
according to popular believe and certainly to our brave Uranus spotter
spiked the drinking water and the cat food with LSD, as Mad Max
and Mad Sue.
In real life Mad Jack was Alistair Findlay and Mad Sue was Susan
Kingsford, and they both deny that they have ever mixed LSD in Barrett’s
tea. Alistair Findlay even stated in Tim Willis’ Madcap
biography that ‘spiking was a heinous crime’. Although these testimonies
date from 2002 (and were repeated in Mark Blake’s biography from 2007)
Emmanuel Le Bret still describes this as a proven fact and categorizes
the couple as:
…un couple infernal (le mot n’est pas trop fort) [qui] biberonne le
genie, rêvant sans doute de l’accompagner dans son voyage, à défaut de
partager son talent… …a devilish couple (that depiction is
not too harsh) boozing the genius, without doubt dreaming to accompany
him in his voyage and to share his talent… (translated by FA, original
found on p. 138)
Pure bollocks, if you ask me, and further proof that the French are at
least 7 years behind compared to the rest of the world.
What is there more to say? Le premier Pink Floyd has no pictures,
although some French photo material does exist, and no index, what is a
pity, especially for a biography. Basically the book reads like a train
but flies like a brick...
To end this misery, a positive note. Here is a proposal to all French
would-be authors who want to write the next Floydian biography, if one
more is still needed: send me a copy before it goes to the publisher and
I will check it for copy and paste errors. It will cost you nothing
except a free copy once it does gets out, promised!
Le Bret, Emmanuel : Syd Barrett. Le premier Pink Floyd., Editions
du Moment, Paris, 2008
(This book is further trashed in another Church post: Tattoo
You.)
Notes (other than the above internet links) Willis, Tim, Madcap,
Short Books, London, 2002, p. 75, repeated in: Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press, London, 2007, p.83.
Illustration (top left) by synofsound - thanks syn!
Rejoice, dear followers of the Esqimau, as The Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit celebrates its first birthday. On the eight day of the
eighth month of the eight year of the third Millennium the Church was
born. That day two messages were posted, the first,
a very modest one, was a mere introduction that was basically written by
someone else, the second
post however told the story of the first public appearance of Iggy,
already nicknamed the Eskimo, in November 1966.
Ig, as the Church prefers to call her now, was spotted by NME on a party
in the presence of Patrick Kerr, the main choreographer of the Ready
Steady Go!-show, one hit wonders Twinkle and Adrienne Posta, Frank Allen
from the Searchers and Mick Jagger wannabee Chris Farlowe. Already then
she was about a mover and could bend it better than Wickham. (Read the
article here: Bend
It!)
It is possible that Ig was a dancer / guest / visitor at a couple of
Ready Steady Go!-shows, but the Church’s investigations have only found
circumstantial evidence of that. The Church is still trying to get hold
of some courageous witnesses who want to testify this before the Holy Igquisition.
Also present at the NME party was pop-PR-publicist Simon Hayes who may
have made the aspiring model believe that he was her agent. Up till now
The Church couldn’t trace the man although several attempts to contact
him have been made.
But this is no time for grief, let us rejoice, rejoice, as today, so
declares the Church, is Ig’s day. And celebrate we will…
In the summer of 2006 Denis Combet, professor at Brandon
University, wrote a collection of poems as a tribute to the musician
and painter Roger Keith Barrett who passed away in Cambridge on the 7th
of July 2006. The poems highlight the life of the young artist as a
nonconformist who preferred – or was forced – to withdraw from the music
world for a more humble existence.
About a year later, part of the collection was published under the title Guitars
and Dust Dancing, in the student webzine Ecclectica (site no longer
active), together with art work from Lou Visentin and music from Pascal
Mascheroni.
The poems describe fragments of Barrett’s life, his youth, his hometown,
his friends and relatives and the collection contain poems dedicated to
and inspired by David Gilmour, Gala Pinion, Lindsay Corner, Nick Mason,
Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Rosemary Breen and Winifred Barrett. And one
of them From Quetesh
to Bastet
is all about Ig.
From Quetesh to Bastet
Quetesh, Majestic.
Iggy
the Eskimo, Girl of space.
Often very alone, But
always a friend.
Star fallen from the black sky: Solar,
solitary, solstice, soloist.
Pale blue crystal dawn, pearl
wine dusk. A mauve Venus, disrobed on the silk orange milky way.
Magical
music, medieval Median, magnetic: Even in worlds where love is
impossible.
Transcended, transparent, translucent,
transitory: Life together unconditionally and forever.
And
that black cat caressing him with a glance, the night. The malefic
vision of Lucifer Sam.
Denis Combet had originally written the poetic cycle in French and when
the Reverend contacted him to get permission to publish the above the
Church also asked for the original to be published as well. It is with
great proudness that we hereafter present the original version of the
Iggy poem that, as far as we know, has never been published before… Just
another world exclusive of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.
De Quétesh à Bastet
Quétesh, Impériale.
Iggy
l’Esquimo, Fille de l’espace.
Souvent très
seule, Mais toujours amie.
Étoile tombée du ciel noir: Solaire,
solitaire, solstice, soliste
Aube de cristal bleu pâle,
crépuscule de vin de perles. Une Vénus mauve, dénudée sur voie
lactée de soie orangée.
Musique magique, médique
médiévale, magnétique: Même dans des univers où
l’amour est impossible.
Transcendée, transparente,
translucide, transitoire: La vie ensemble sans détours et pour
toujours.
Et ce chat noir qui le caresse du regard, la nuit. La
vision maléfique de Lucifer Sam.
Originally it was planned to launch a separate website
(poemstosydbarrett.com) in 2008 containing the complete works (poems,
music and art) and to publish the cycle in book form. But due to the
high costs involved to print an art book the author is still looking for
a publisher who would be interested. For the time being the Reverend
wants to invite you all to read the poems, have a look at the artwork
and listen to the music at Ecclectica: Guitars and Dust Dancing (website
no longer active).
The Reverend wants to thank Dr. Denis Combet for his permission to
publish the Ig poems on this space. And with this final message comes an
end to the official proceedings of the first anniversary of The Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit. Let's have some booze and party! Rejoice,
rejoice, we have no choice but… to carry on… A la
prochaine, my friends, et ne fait pas ce que Iggy ne ferait pas…
Update 31 12 2013: The original Ecclectica and Poems To
Syd Barrett links no longer work. In 2011 Denis Combet allowed the
Church to upload his poems and artwork as a Flash 'pageFlip' book: Crystal
Blue Postcards.
Update 19 12 2018: As Flash will soon be a thing from the past Crystal
Blue Postcards is now available as a PDF flipbook:
Notes: Born in Marseille, France in 1955, Professor Denis
Combet holds a doctorate from the Universit de Nancy II. Since 1975 he
works in Canada at the University of Manitoba, the College Universitaire
de Saint-Boniface, and the University of Victoria. He is currently an
associate professor in Arts > Languages at Brandon University (Brandon,
Manitoba, Canada).
Dr. Denis Combet is (co-)author of several historical works and articles: º
Gabriel Dumont, Mémoires/Memoirs was nominated by the
Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards for the Alexander Kennedy
Isbister Award, Winnipeg 2007. º In Search for the Western
Sea/A la recherche de la mer de l’Ouest, mémoires choisis de La
Vérendrye, Selected journals of La Vérendrye was selected
by The Globe and Mail (November 24, 2001, p. D 40) among the «Best of
the year» 2001, in the category Gift-History. It was nominated by the
Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards, for five awards, and won two,
Best Design, and the Mac Williams Awards, for best Popular History book.
The above poems are the property of Denis Combet and are
protected by international copyright laws. You may not reproduce,
modify, distribute or republish materials contained on this site (either
directly or by linking) without prior written permission from the
author.
Authorised subsidiaries: The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Youtube
channel The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Facebook Fanpage
As if the world has suddenly been hit by a temporal rift in spacetime
the March 2010 issue of Mojo
music magazine has inundated the stores bearing a big (slightly photoshopped)
portrait of a mister Syd Barrett. The well-written and rather accurate
cover article, by Pat Gilbert, ranges from page 70 to 81 and tells the
story of The Madcap Laughs, Syd Barrett’s first solo album.
Two other articles are of particular interest to the Church as they
describe the mythical presence of a ‘girl whose naked body graced the
back cover of The Madcap Laughs’.
Who’s That Girl (page 76 insert) is written by Mark
Blake, author of the Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly, and
an occasional visitor (and contributor) of the Church. Out of courtesy
(and for copyright reasons) the Church will not publish the article as
long as the magazine is for sale in the shops. Update: Direct
link to the article: Mojo
March 2010 (hosted at the Church as the article was removed from the
official Barrett website in 2016).
People reading magazines with binoculars will find an odd reference to
the Church as the Croydon Guardian article from the 17th September 2008
has been reproduced as well, however in such small print that one needs
to xerox it in blow-up mode to distinguish individual letters. The
article in full can be consulted at the Church (Where
did she go?) but is also still present on the archives of the
Croydon Guardian (Where
did she go to our lovely?).
Mark Blake writes in Mojo:
In 2008, (Jeff) Dexter and (Anthony) Stern tried to trace the elusive
Iggy, and were interviewed in the Croydon Guardian for leads to the
whereabouts of the “carefree girl who captured the spirit of the ‘60s”.
Actually the motor behind this article were not Dexter and Stern but the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit, after - truth has to be acknowledged –
Mark Blake had revealed earlier that Iggy ‘was known as one of the
regular teenage girls at the dancehalls around Purley and Caterham’ (see
also: Shaken
not stirred ).
Researching The Orchid dancehall in Purley, the Reverend found two
articles that had appeared in the Croydon Guardian: In
dance hall days (9th August 2006) and We
remember the Orchid (29th August 2006).
The Church tried to contact Brian Roote in September 2008, an amateur
historian writing a book about the Purley dancehall, but this resulted
more than a year later in the simple comment: ‘I have no knowledge of
this girl whatsoever'.
The Reverend had more chance with journalist Kerry McQueeney author of
the two Orchid articles, but no longer working for the Croydon Guardian.
He passed the story to Kirsty Whalley who was now editor of the Heritage
pages of the newspaper. On the 3rd September of 2008 she replied:
We would like to feature this story in the newspaper next week and
hopefully it will prompt a few people to call in.
In the same mail she also asked if the Church could give some leads and
amongst the people to contact the Reverend mentioned the names of Mick
Rock and Anthony Stern. Kirsty Whalley did an excellent job and did not
only interview both men, but also Jeff Dexter who had been a DJ at The
Orchid.
The next sermon at the Church will cover the second Iggy-related article
from Mojo 196. In My Room, written by Paul Drummond, contains
interviews with Duggie Fields, Mick Rock, Storm Thorgerson and Jenny
Spires.
The Madcap Laughs Again (Mojo Tribute CD)
Mojo 196 comes with a Madcap Laughs cover CD as interpreted by (amongst
others): R.E.M., Captain Sensible, Hawkwind, Jennifer Gentle, Marc
Almond and Robyn Hitchcock. Reviews of this CD can be found at Late
Night: The
Madcap Laughs Again, including the one written by the Reverend.
The Mojo website contains a Syd Barrett top 20 jukebox
and three YouTube links to Syd's legendary unreleased material. One of
those fan-made videos (Lucy
Leave) has been created by limpidgreen aka dollyrocker, a much
appreciated Late
Night forum member. Way to go, dollyrocker! (All links dead, we're
afraid.)
(This is part two of our Mojo magazine review, for part one, click here).
As if the world has suddenly been hit by a temporal rift in spacetime
the March 2010 issue of Mojo music magazine has inundated the stores
bearing a big (slightly photoshopped) portrait of a mister Syd Barrett.
The well-written and rather accurate cover article, by Pat Gilbert,
ranges from page 70 to 81 and tells the story of The Madcap Laughs, Syd
Barrett’s first solo album.
Two other articles are of particular interest to the Church as they
describe the mythical presence of a ‘girl whose naked body graced the
back cover of The Madcap Laughs’.
Last week
we discussed the Who’s That Girl article written by Mark
Blake, and this week the Church will scrutinize Paul Drummond’s In
My Room (Mojo 196, p. 82 - 84). Out of courtesy (and for copyright
reasons) the Reverend has decided not to publish the articles as long as
the magazine is for sale in the shops. Update: Direct link to
the article: Mojo
March 2010. (hosted at the Church as the article was removed from
the official Barrett website in 2016).
The article, about The Madcap Laughs photo sessions, has interviews with
Duggie Fields, Mick Rock and - so it seems - Jenny Spires. But although
she was interviewed by email for the main article by Pat Gilbert, she
has told the Church she wasn’t really questioned about Iggy.
I guessed, when I saw it, they must have looked at your site (re Daffodils
and photo shoot etc…), as I was not asked about this
or about Iggy. (JenS, 10th of February 2010, mail to the Church)
The Reverend could do no other thing than to summon the Holy Igquisition
to stick in a few comments as the In The Room article clearly
breathes the holy air of the Church but neglects to mention its
existence in its columns.
Ig and Jenny Spires meeting each other for the first time
Mojo 196 reports:
Jenny Spires first met Iggy in January 1969 and introduced her to Syd
and he let her stay. (p. 83)
The Holy Igquisition wants to set this straight: According to
the Church’s archives JenS first met Ig in summer 1966 (cfr. When
Syd met Iggy). The year thereafter (1967) they met again and from
then one they went on clubbing together. This has once again been
confirmed by Jens this week:
I was surprised they had mistakenly printed that I met her in 1969. This
annoys me really because of its inaccuracy.
The date of The Madcap Laughs photo shoot
Mojo 196 reports:
Iggy’s involvement appears to date the shoot as spring ’69 as she was
long gone by autumn. (p. 83)
The Holy Igquisition wants to set straight: JenS has situated
the photo shoot in spring 1969 (March or April) (cfr. When
Syd met Iggy 1). Further investigations by the Church have
pinpointed a possible date in April 1969 (cfr. When
Syd met Iggy 2).
Daffodils
Mojo 196 reports:
It’s more likely Syd picked them (the daffodils found on the cover of
the album) while in the park with Iggy, as captured on Super-8 film.
(p.83)
The Holy Igquisition wants to set straight: The Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit has discussed the lost In The Woods movie at great extent
(cfr. Anoraks
and Pontiacs). However the theory that the Lost in The Woods video
was shot before the photo shoot is new and quite intriguing. However the
idea that Iggy, Mick and Syd picked the daffodils is, according to JenS,
quite silly.
Pontiac
Mojo 196 writes:
When the photo shoot was over, Rock continued outside using Syd’s blue
Pontiac Parisienne as a prop. (…) The life of this inanimate object
(registration: VYP74) helps confirm that the shoot wasn’t in the autumn.
(p. 84)
The Holy Igquisition wans to set straight: The story of Syd
Barrett’s car has been the object of different posts at the Church (cfr. When
Syd met Iggy 2), but the initial quest for the car was done at the Late
Night forum by Dark Globe, Sean Beaver and others… they found out
that the car appeared in the movie Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Unlike Mojo
magazine, the Church does like to give credit to the people who deserve
it.
The Holy Igquisition concludes:
It is clear that Mojo magazine has extensively browsed through the pages
of the Holy Church of Inuit but has somehow forgotten to mention
this in its articles. The Holy Igquisition has therefore sent the
following objurgation at Mojo:
It was nice to see that the many theories of the Holy Church of Iggy the
Inuit have been reproduced in The Madcap Laughs photo shoot article,
albeit without mentioning where these originally came from.
However the Holy Igquisiton knows that any true believer will find the
Church, so every Iggy publication will be beneficiary in the end. Ig’s
story as published in the March issue of Mojo may be the butterfly
effect that will cause the storm at the other side of the world. So
perhaps, thanks to Mojo, the Church will be one day able to fulfil its
quest.
Rather than to start an endless polemical discussion the Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit would like to end this post with Duggie Fields’s
magnificent description of our skyclad sistren (p. 82):
I remember being at a 31 bus stop and seeing her coming down the stairs
very elegantly in this gold lame 1940s dress that had bell sleeves that
buttoned to a train but with no underwear and completely exposed…
Not a care in the world.
Lo and behold brethren and sistren, and don't do anything
that Ig wouldn't have done.
In my very early days of Internet I wanted to know everything of my
favourite band: Pink
Floyd. Webpages were still something very exotic, and a webpage that
changed its appearance once a month even more so, but luckily there was
Bear's Echoes
mailing list that I still read every day for over a decade and half now.
Subscribing to Echoes would automatically give you a copy of the latest
Echoes Pink Floyd FAQ, maintained by that monument of Floyd oddities Gerhard
den Hollander. Divided in 10 sections it learned me more about the
brothers Floyd than anything else, I kept it close to me just like that
other, lavishly illustrated, monument of knowledge and wisdom, Pink
Floyd, The Visual Documentary (1980) by (Barry) Miles.
The Echoes FAQ is not updated anymore since 1999, although a feeble
attempt to resuscitate it was once made a couple of years ago, but there
are zillions of websites and blogs dealing with those matters nowadays
and in case of doubt, there will always be Wikipedia.
Mailing Group FAQs are now as hip as a telex machine was when the fax
came out. So it goes.
Thus when Amazon nicely proposed to send me Pink Floyd FAQ from Stuart
Shea I followed their advice, mainly because my memories of the original
Pink Floyd FAQ were still short and sweet. The moment I clicked I felt
remorse because this book could easily be a rehash of the original FAQ
that I already had, updated with news that I already knew and the four reviews
I found ranged from "this is a great book" to "the book is one of the
most useless publications about that band in years". Nice.
Let me start with the obvious. The book is not half as bad as I feared
it would be but neither is it as good as a book could be that pretends
to contain a FAQ, a whole FAQ and nothing but a FAQ.
The subtitle Everything Left to Know… and More! (exclamation point
included) is a bit overzealous if you ask me.
The book does not give a chronological overview of Pink Floyd but ranges
its subjects by the subject, as shows the table of contents that you can
consult here.
Unfortunately the book has got no index, what duly pisses me off, so if
you want to know something about, let's say: You
Gotta Be Crazy, there is no other way to find it than to start
reading the bloody thing all over again. So called biographies and
reference books (as a FAQ, by definition should be) without an index (or
an alphabetical or chronological filing system) are immediately put
aside by me and won't be touched again. Ever. Probably the author won't
care, the book was sold anyway.
Got A Moment?
Some of the chapters look like they have been inspired by these non
informational page filling articles in pop magazines that keep on
appearing whether you like it or not.
What are ten great Syd Barrett moments? What are ten great David
Gilmour moments? What are ten great Roger Waters moments? What are
ten great Rick Wright moments?
and last but not least the quite ridiculous…
What are ten great Nick Mason moments?
Probably you see it coming, but there is something basically irrational
in the previous list. You can most likely find ten memorable Syd Barrett
songs in the short period he was with the band (although Stuart Shea
can't and cheats by adding Barrett solo stuff), obviously you can find
ten memorable Rick Wright collaborations in Pink Floyd, although the
song Wearing
The Inside Out, that is, in retrospect, his musical testament has
been unexplainably overlooked. And so is, Syd almighty, The
Great Gig In The Sky. That song, I'm sure, is treated in another
chapter, but as the book has got no index, I haven't got a clue where to
find that information.
To note down ten notable Nick Mason moments you have to scrape the
barrel a bit. Don't get me wrong, I think that Nick Mason probably was
the best drummer Pink Floyd ever had and he was a crucial part in
creating the classic Pink Floyd sound (on recent albums he insisted to
record his drum licks analog instead of digital to name just one
useless, but nevertheless interesting, point that is overlooked in the
FAQ), but he didn't get a lot of official credits for it.
But let's be honest, only ten great David Gilmour or Roger Waters
moments? Roger Waters thinks he has ten great Roger Waters moments
between getting out of bed and his morning pee! All fun aside, making a
'ten great moments' list is considered more appropriate for internet
fora (with all discussions and no-no-s involved) than for a book.
Bob Dylan Shoes
Although a FAQ can't answer all possible questions, it is - by
definition - a list of the most frequent questions, it helps the reader
if he finds as much information as possible. If, at chapter 12: what
acts influenced Pink Floyd?, Bob Dylan is mentioned it would, perhaps,
be interesting to know that Syd Barrett once recorded a tune called Bob
Dylan Blues or that Roger Waters covered Knocking On Heaven's Door,
but it doesn't. According to Stuart Shea one of the ten most influential
bands or artists for Pink Floyd was the legendary disco outfit Chic
because Another
Brick In The Wall (Pt. 2) carries a hundred-beats-per-minutes
beat. I would have preferred to see a reference to AMM
or The
Soft Machine instead.
And when there is talk of a FAQ, I would also like to have some accurate
information as well. Page 132 has a picture from the Floyd with the
caption 'The Floyd on an oddly small stage during the early 1970s. By
this time, they had graduated to playing large halls'. The fact why the
Floyd stands on an oddly small stage is because the picture comes
from the movie Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972). Their rendition of Careful
With That Axe, Eugene, however was not recorded in Pompeii but in a
studio in France and in order to get them all four on screen they had to
be standing close to each other. Simple as that. No need to create an
extra Floydian fable when there is no need to do that.
Despite the fact that you can answer a lot of Pink Floyd questions (the
original FAQ had 10 sections, each with dozens of questions and answers)
several chapters do overlap each other, and this happens more than once. How
did the US discover Pink Floyd goes one about their early (American)
tours, so does the chapter What were Pink Floyd concerts Like in…,
so does The 1972 and 1973 Tours, so does A Pink Floyd live top
ten…
Special Guests
What I do like is that some articles have been written by guests that
ring distant church bells with Pink Floyd fans: Mark Campbell, Steven
Leventhal, Ron Geesin, John Leckie, Toni Tennile, Ginger Gilmour…
overall the book is fun to read (and written in an agreeable way) but
the bottom line is: this is not a Pink Floyd FAQ and certainly not THE
Pink Floyd FAQ. Easily read, but also easily forgotten.
People who don't know nothing about the Floyd are, in my opinion,
better off with The
Rough Guide To Pink Floyd (Tobby Manning) that combines the band's
history, has a discography (with reviews for every album) and a thematic
approach like 'Floyd's finest 50' and 'Floyd on Film'. This is an
excellent book for starters (and as a Pink Floyd fan for over 35 years I
enjoyed it as well).
If you would like an in-depth Pink Floyd biography I can recommend Mark
Blake's Pigs
Might Fly or, if you have a lot of money, the memoirs of Mr. Nick
Mason himself (Inside
Out). And for anoraks who want to look up the nitty-gritty there is
always The
Pink Floyd Encyclopaedia by Vernon Fitch (alphabetically) and Echoes
by Glenn Povey (chronologically).
I am not entirely sure what kind of public Stuart Shea wanted to reach
with his book but what I am sure of is that, throughout the book, the
author likes to ventilate his own opinion rather than to stick to the
facts. Here is what he has to say about The Cult of Syd Barrett (p.313):
Some Syd Barrett fans are as sick as the man himself was at his worst.
Despite the voluminous evidence of his excessive drug use, physical
assaults on girlfriends and business associates, disastrous attempts at
recording and gigging, and largely incoherent interviews from his
post-Floyd period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there are those who
wish to romanticize his illness as a willful subversion of pop stardom.
There are now more Syd Barrett biographies around (in the English
language alone) than Syd Barrett records and several Pink Floyd
biographies consecrate the same amount of pages for the first three
years of the Floyd than for the next 30. So obviously there must be
something mysterious going on with this Syd character.
The last in line to open Pandora's box is Rob Chapman. He was actually
one of the few people (around 30 to 50) who saw Syd's mythical band Stars
at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge (24 February 1972) and is still
relatively sane enough to recall it. Young chap Robert Chapman even
wrote a review
for Terrapin
magazine, that would disappear a few years later for 'lack of Syd' but
also because no three Syd Barrett fans can come together without having
a tremendous fight. Try running an Internet joint for that lot nowadays
and you'll see what I mean.
Writing a biography is a difficult job and I once remarked in a (quite
pompous) review that biographers are situated on a scale, ranging
from those who meticulously verify, double verify and triple verify tiny
facts to those that will not hesitate to add a good, albeit probably
untrue, anecdote just because it goes down so well.
Rob Chapman is, and often quite rightly so, annoyed with the many
legends around Barrett and wants to set the record straight. I kind of
like this way of working. But he doesn't indulge us either in an ongoing
shopping list of facts and figures. The art of writing biographies is
not in adding details, that is the easy bit, but in weeding out the
superfluous so that a readable book (rather than a shopping list)
remains.
But sometimes I have the feeling that he weeded a bit too much. The trouvaille
of the name Pink Floyd (p. 53) is literally dealt with in a single line.
Of course ardent Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett fans alike already know the
story about Philips
BBL-7512 and its liner notes by heart, but the occasional reader
might as well benefit from an extra wee bit of information. And quite
frankly it is about time that David (Dave) Moore
gets the credits for the mail he sent to Bryan Sinclair on the 14th of
March 2005 entitled: “RE: [pre-war-blues] Pink Anderson / Floyd Council.”
From an LP apparently in the possession of Syd Barrett: Blind Boy
Fuller, Country Blues 1935-1940, issued on Phillips BBL-7512, c. 1962.
The sleeve notes were by Paul Oliver, and include the following: "Curley
Weaver and Fred McMullen, Georgia-born but more frequently to be found
in Kentucky or Tennessee, Pink Anderson or Floyd Council -- these were a
few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling
hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded
valleys." (Source: Pink
Anderson / Floyd Council @ pre-war-blues Yahoo, membership probably
needed)
Update 2015: The complete story of the Blind Boy Fuller album
that gave Pink Floyd its name can be found at: Step
It Up And Go.
Chapman, the fearless vampire killer
You might say, that piece of information is too anoraky and Rob
Chapman was right not to include it, but why then, when he can lash out
at previous Syd Barrett biographers, doesn't he apply his own rules
anymore? Every new biography should have its new findings, otherwise
there would be no necessity to write it, and I do understand that you
can point out a flagrant mistake that has been made in a previous
biography, but Chapman acts repeatedly as a vindictive (and verbally
abusive) Von
Helsing, wooden stake in his hand, ready to stick it through the
heart of a vampire on the loose. Only, in my book, a fellow biographer
should not be treated as a vampire but rather as a colleague, perhaps an
erring colleague, but still a colleague... Writing that some biographies
should have a government health warning on their cover is not nice and
is better left to amateur blog authors like yours truly and journalists
of The Sun.
We have established by now that Rob Chapman does not like false and
superfluous information, but on top of that he also has some theories of
his own. David Gilmour recalls how he was invited at the See
Emily Play recording session (officially the 21st of May 1967, but,
according to David Parker, a first session could have taken place on the
18th) and how he found that 'the golden boy had lost the light in his
eyes'. Somewhere around that date Syd turned 'crazy' so we have been
lead to believe for the past 40 years…
Inside Out
Chapman is of the opinion that Barrett didn't turn mad, but rather that
he was alternatively wired and that, what other people have described as
mad behaviour, was really Syd playing cosmic jokes on the rest of the
world or setting up dadaist and misinterpreted avant-garde performances.
Just like the proverbial fish in a fisherman's story gets bigger and
bigger so have Syd legends accumulated weight over the years. Rob
Chapman doesn't like these apocryphal stories and wants to debunk these
once and for all. He does a good job at that, but - once again - weeds
to much. It is not because you can correct a couple of false rumours
that - by definition - all memories from all witnesses have to be
categorised untrue. And that is what Chapman implies. Even more, in
order to prove his theory, he deliberately skips several events that
have happened but that he can't immediately minimise or contradict.
It is good to counterbalance the Syd Barrett articles and biographies
that have thriven upon sensationalism (Le
premier Pink Floyd from Emmanuel Le Bret comes to mind, luckily that
2008 biography was written in French and completely ignored by the
Anglo-Saxon world) but that is not a reason to indulge into a fairytale
world of Barrett the mystic, but misinterpreted, genius. That is
unethical and close to historical revisionism and it turns the middle
part of the biography (covering the Piper and Madcap years) into a
somewhat misplaced hagiography.
You will probably not believe me when I tell I didn't do it on purpose,
but when Chapman quotes Nick Mason's autobiography Inside Out on
page 198, saying that Nick writes that 'Syd went mad' during the
American tour of 1967, I grabbed my copy (actually, I carefully took and
opened it, as it is quite heavy) and read pages 87 till 97 over again. I
did this three times. I can't find it. I will not conclude that
Nick may never have written (or said during an interview) that 'Syd went
mad' but it isn't there where Chapman claims it is. It makes Chapman a
sloppy researcher, to say the least.
Update October 2010: By accident I stumbled upon the Syd is
crazy quote (or one of the Syd is crazy quotes) from Nick
Mason in Barry Miles' The Early Years book: "You can't believe that
someone's deliberately trying to screw it up and yet the other half of
you is saying 'This man's crazy - he's trying to destroy me!'"
Nick however does write that on two different occasions on the American
tour Syd detuned his guitar, one time even 'until the strings fell off'.
This apparently made Roger Waters so angry that he 'gashed his hand in a
furious attack on his bass guitar', smashing the (lend) instrument to
pieces at the end of the show.
Rob Chapman doesn't see where the problem is and remarks joyfully that
Syd had been deliberately detuning his guitar in the past (during the
Floyd's early free-form jams) and that it was tolerated and even
encouraged then. He seems not to realise that there might have been a
time and place to detune a guitar and a time and place NOT to
detune a guitar. When I visit my doctor, who is looking gorgeous by the
way, and unbutton my trousers in front of her she will not be offended,
but if I catch her at the local supermarket, choosing a deep-freeze
pizza (the living proof that deep-freeze pizzas are healthy, by the way)
and dangle my ding-a-ling in front of her, I will be in hell of a
trouble. Not that I have done that, those rumours are incredibly
exaggerated and I am again allowed to enter the supermarket anyway.
The Big Barrett Conspiracy
Chapman more or less suggests that, over the years, there has been a Big
Barrett Conspiracy going on, claiming that Syd went mad while he was
just being artistically misunderstood. It is obvious that Waters, Mason
and Wright, and to a lesser extent Gilmour, were behind the conspiracy.
They quit their studies and promising architectural career to follow the
narrow path of psychedelic pop music and when money was finally starting
to come in a whimsical Barrett wanted to turn the clock back (probably
through a washing machine) and concentrate on experiment again
(proto-Floyd members Bob
Klose and Chris Dennis had left the band in the past just
because their profession stood in the way). Chapman doesn't even try to
hide his disgust for post-Syd Floyd, but more about that later.
What is less understandable is that Peter Jenner and Andrew King are
part of the conspiracy as well, because when Syd and Pink Floyd went
separate ways, they choose to manage Syd instead of following the goose
with the golden eggs. Jenner assisted Barrett during his first batch of
sessions for The Madcap Laughs (1968) but commented later that these
were 'chaos'. The sessions had been going on from May till July and
Jenner reported that they weren't getting anywhere.
Chapman disagrees, he states that during the 6 studio sessions in
1968 Barrett recorded half a dozen of rough tracks dispelling the myth
of a 'muse run dry'. I count 9 sessions, by the way, making
Barrett's tracks per sessions ratio one third less performing as Chapman
wants us to believe, but that is not the issue here. The main problem is
not that Barrett was out of songs. Six of them still doesn't make an
album, unless you would add the 18 minutes of the avant-garde
(read: tedious) Rhamadan. The main problem with Barrett was that
the songs never outgrew the rehearsal or demo stadium. Simply said:
Barrett wasted a lot of studio time. And these were still the days that
a record company expected an artist to cut an entire album in three or
four sessions, the only exception perhaps being The Beatles.
Update October 2010: after 40 years Rhamadan has been issued as a
free download with the An Introduction to Syd Barrett
compilation. The track isn't half as bad as everyone - especially those
who never heard it - claimed it to be, but it needs some serious weeding
to be presentable as a 'real' album track. More info: Gravy
Train To Cambridge.
Juggling the Octopus
I see in Rob Chapman a man with a passion and he is at his best when he
analyses Syd's songs. It takes him 7 pages to scrutinise Clowns &
Jugglers (re-titled later as Octopus),
making it clear to the outside world that Syd wasn't just a young
innocent bloke whose lyrics came to him in a psychedelic, LSD-induced,
dream. Chapman traces back references (and quotes) from: Huff
the Talbot and our Cat Tib (Mother Goose rhyme), Thomas Nashe's
Summer's Last Will and Testament (an Elizabethan masque play), Shakespeare's
King Henry VI Pt. 1, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows and
poems from Anonymous (Mr
Nobody), John Clare (Fairy Things), Sir Henry Newbolt (Rilloby-Rill)
and William Howitt (The
Wind in a Frolic).
Unfortunately I have in my small collection of Barrett related works a
12-page essay, written in 2005 by Paul Belbin, published at the Madcapslaughing
and Vegetable Friends mailing groups, titled: Untangling the
Octopus. It describes in detail, almost verse per verse, where Syd
Barrett sampled the lines from Octopus from. Although Chapman nearly
literally copies the information for 7 pages long, he neglects to
mention the source of his findings.
Update October 2010: Paul Belbin has authorised the Holy Church
of Iggy the Inuit to host the 2006 version of his essay: Untangling
the Octopus v2 (PDF file).
In 2009 a revised and updated version of Untangling
The Octopus was published by Julian
Palacios, a Syd Barrett biographer who doesn't even appear in
Chapman's bibliography, but as Chapman spifflicates the biographies he
does mention that probably is a compliment.
Demythologising Syd
Chapman can get downright cynical when he wants to take the myth out of
Barrett and this is where the biography as a biography goes astray.
Although a biographer may be unconditionally in love with his subject he
(she) must at the same time keep a certain distance, be unprejudiced and
should approach the subject with at least a glimpse of unbiased
neutrality.
Debunking the brylcreem and mandrax anecdote is not bad,
but it is not directly original either. Chapman isn't the first one to
have done this as shows this forum
post by Julian Palacios and also Mark Blake has put some question
marks concerning the event.
Apart from some anecdotes that happened at family parties or random
encounters on the street with old friends and (past) lovers, we don't
know a lot about Syd Barrett's life in Cambridge. So if a witness does
turns up it would perhaps be a chance to check him (or her) out. But in
a Q&A
that was published on the official Syd
Barrett website Chapman tells why he didn't contact the Barrett neighbour
who has not always been positive
about the rockstar next door:
My thoughts, clearly and unambiguously are that I didn’t want to give
this individual a scintilla of publicity. (…) I did check him out, quite
extensively as it happens, and my enquiries lead, among other places, to
a website where he gives his enlightened views on capital punishment and
who should receive it – most of us, by the look of it.
It is not because someone has a dubious opinion about capital punishment
that his memories about Barrett are - by definition - untrue or
unreliable. However Chapman is not that reluctant when a witness turns
up who has got some positive things to say about Barrett.
On pages 365 and following, Chapman recites the charming anecdote of a
young child who ran into Barrett's garden to ask him a pertinent
question about a make-believe horse. Not only did Barrett patiently
listen to her dilemma, he also took the time to explain her that in
fairy tales everything is possible, even flying horses.
It is in anecdotes such as this that Chapman shows his unconditional
love for Barrett, and I confess that it made my grumpy heart mellow as
well. Here is the man, who invariably smashed the door to any fan
approaching his house, earnestly discussing fairy tales figures with a
neighbourhood's kid.
Update September 2013: some more information about this girl,
Radharani Krishna, can be found at the following article: Making
it clear...
Wish You Were... but where exactly?
One of the greatest legends about Syd Barrett is how he showed up at the Wish
You Were Here recording settings on the fifth of June 1975. A Very
Irregular Head merely repeats the story as it has been told in other
biographies, articles and documentaries, including Rick Wright's
testimony that Barrett kept brushing his teeth with a brush that was
hidden in a plastic bag. Roger Waters however claims that Barrett only
took sweets out of the bag. As usual different witnesses tell different
stories.
The toothbrush myth is one Chapman doesn't know how to demystify but
recently Mark
Blake may have found a plausible explanation.
The 'toothbrush' and 'bag of candies' may have come out of the story I
heard from somebody else that was at Abbey Road that day. They claimed
Syd Barrett had a bag filled with packets of Amplex. For those that
don't know or remember, Amplex was a breath-freshener sweet that was
popular in the 70s. This eyewitness claims that Syd Barrett was
nervously stuffing Amplex sweets into his mouth... another story to add
to the pile... but you can see how the story of 'breath-freshener
sweets' could turn into a 'toothbrush' and/or 'a bag of candies'. (Taken
from May
5, 2010 Roger Waters TV interview at Late
Night.)
Update August 2011: according to Mark Blake in Mojo 215 the
Amplex story comes from journalist Nick Sedgwick, who was writing an
(unreleased) Pink Floyd related book at that time and author of the
novel Light Blue With Bulges, that describes his beatnik adventures in
Cambridge in the early sixties. More info: The
Case of the Painted Floorboards (v 2.012).
The Madcap Laughs
Another mystery Chapman can't solve is the exact time frame of the
shooting of The Madcap Laughs album cover. He still situates this
between August and November 1969 although there is a slightly obscure
website on this world that maintains that the pictures date from the beginning
of that year.
Chapman does a good, what do I say, a great job by describing
Syd's later years. He still can't say a lot about Syd's lost weekend
between the mid-Seventies and the early Eighties, although there must be
people around who knew or even visited him. Perhaps that insane Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit should try to locate some of them.
In 1982, in the midst of Wall-mania,
Barrett left his Syd-character behind by walking the distance between
London and Cambridge. For the remainder of his life he would prefer to
be known as Rog or Roger.
Chapman managed to talk to Rosemary Breen, Syd's sister, and it
is through her that we know a great deal of Barrett's later life. It is
a sad story, but one with many laughs, as Rosemary remembers mainly her
brother's latter-day sense of humour. That and the story of Syd's life
as an adolescent, thanks to the many letters that Libby Gausden
has kept for all these years, are the strongholds of this, his,
biography.
Pink Fraud
Just when you thought this review was finally going to end it is time to
get personal.
I started reading this biography and was genuinely intrigued by the
author's style, his wit, his knowledge, but also his unhealthy habit of
demeaning anyone who doesn't share his ideas. But I could live with it,
despite the odd tsk-tsk that would leave my mouth once in a while.
The passage that made me loose my marbles can be found halfway the book
on page 213. It describes how Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd legally split
up. Peter Jenner and Andrew King stayed with Barrett, the rest of the
band had to choose a new agency, a new manager and a new recording
contract. The rest of the band's history, so writes Rob Chapman, is accountancy.
The Early 70 Tours with the Embryo suite: accountancy? Meddle
(with Echoes): accountancy? Dark Side Of The Moon: accountancy? Wish
You Were Here: accountancy? Animals: accountancy? The
Wall: accountancy?
Update October 2010: When Barrett and Pink Floyd split up there
was the small matter of a 17,000 British Pounds debt that the band had.
The Abdab accountants didn't burden Syd Barrett, nor Peter Jenner
and Andrew King with that.
On page 317 Chapman infuriates me a little bit more by writing that
Waters, Mason, Wright and Gilmour sound like a firm of chartered
surveyors. I find this remark as insulting as deliberately mistaking
Rob Chapman for Mark
David Chapman.
His opinion that, on Wish You Were here, Pink Floyd uses sixth-form
imagery to describe their former bandsman (and friend) didn't hurt me
anymore. By then Rob Chapman had already become something I usually pick
out of my nose.
In Chapman's opinion an entire generation of musicians (in the
Seventies) began to make music 'more appropriate to the rocking chair
than to the rocket ship'. The man has a way with words, that I have to
admit.
I had heard of these Pink Floyd haters before, people who really think
that the band died when Barrett left the gang. The problem is that most
of these people are aware of Syd Barrett thanks to the fame and glory of
a dinosaur called Pink Floyd.
Without Syd Barrett no Pink Floyd, I agree (although it was Roger Waters
who invited Barrett to join the band, not the other way round). But
without Pink Floyd most of us, myself included, would never have heard
of Syd Barrett either.
Thanks to the success of the classic Pink Floyd concepts EMI kept the
Barrett solo records in their catalogue. The 1974 vinyl compilation Syd
Barrett was a direct result of the interest for early Floyd, after A
Nice Pair (1973) had proven successful. Poor Barrett earned 'two and
a half million quid' in one year thanks to the Echoes compilation alone.
The backside is that due to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and The Wall
fans from all over the globe started to look for Barrett, hoping he
would explain them the meaning of life. Probably Syd would have
preferred to be left alone even if it meant not to have all those
millions on the bank. But if there is one thing we can't do, it is to
change past history, although Chapman tries, more than once, to do so.
Conclusion
Until finally Julian Palacios comes up with a revised edition of Lost
in the Woods, Rob Chapman deserves my sincere felicitations for
writing one of the most readable Barrett biographies ever. But for
constantly exposing himself as an infallible Barrett-prophet,
pooh-poohing all those who don't think like him and deliberately
ignoring facts that don't fit in his gospel, he deserves nothing more
than a good kick on the nose.
Update: some of the anoraky points mentioned in the above article
(Octopus lyrics, 1968 sessions) have been further examined in Mad
Cat Love (2011).
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above): Belbin,
Paul: Untangling the Octopus v2, 2006. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit with Paul Belbin's
permission. Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London,
2007, p. 95, p. 231. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history
of Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 94-95. Miles,
Barry: Pink Floyd The Early Years, Omnibus Press, London, 2006,
p.111. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books,
London, 2001, p. 136, p. 138.
Mandrax & Brylcreem drawing taken from thepiperatthegatesofdawn.co.uk
(site no longer available).
A quite nice (promotional) interview with Rob Chapman can be found at Youtube.
There was a time when I would put in the latest Orb CD and murmur
blimey! Blimey because The
Orb pleasantly surprised me or blimey because Alex
'LX' Paterson and band utterly frustrated me. They had that effect
on me for years from their very first album Adventures
Beyond The Ultraworld (1991) until the quite underrated Cydonia
(2001). Often the wow! and meh! impression could be witnessed on the
same disk, most notably on Orbus
Terrarum that probably contains the freakiest ambient track ever
(the heavenly Oxbow Lakes) but also some of the worst.
The Millennium Orb
After 2001 Paterson continued to make albums under the Orb banner but
the wow! effect has largely disappeared. His most prolific output lays
on quite a few (from good to excellent) compilation and/or remix albums:
Dr. Alex Paterson's Voyage Into Paradise, Auntie Aubrey's Excursions
Beyond The Call Of Duty (containing an Orb remix
of Rick Wright's Runaway), Bless You (the best of the Badorb
label), Orbsessions I and II (outtakes), Back To Mine, The Art Of Chill
and last but not least The BBC Sessions.
For ages The Orb has been called the Pink Floyd of ambient dance but the
only fusion between both bands is the use of some Pink Floyd samples on
early Orb anthems (the four note Shine On You Crazy Diamond
signature tune on A
Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The
Ultraworld) and the presence of Pink Floyd bass player ad interim Guy
Pratt on a couple of Orb albums.
Contrary to a stubborn belief the so-called ambient (and illegal) Pink
Floyd remix albums from the Nineties are not the work from The Orb, nor
from Alex Paterson. Neither will we ever know Pink Floyd's retaliation:
when the band worked on their 1994 The Divison Bell album they ended up
with so many left-over material that - in the words of Nick Mason - "we
considered releasing it as a second album, including a set we dubbed The
Big Spliff, the kind of ambient mood music that we were bemused to
find being adopted by bands like The Orb".
Update 2015 01 15: Parts of The Big Spliff may have appeared on
the latest Pink Floyd album: The Endless River. See our review: While
my guitar gently weeps...
Rumours...
Exactly one year ago Alex Paterson, who has always been a bit of a
bigmouth, revealed:
I’ve just started work on an album with David Gilmore (sic)
from Pink Floyd which I think every Orb and Pink Floyd fan will want to
hear.
But that news was hurriedly demoted by David Gilmour.
Recent comments by ambient exponents The Orb's Alex Paterson that they
have been collaborating with David Gilmour are true – up to a point.
David has done some recording with The Orb and producer Youth, inspired
initially by the plight of Gary McKinnon. However, nothing is finalised,
and nothing has been confirmed with regards to any structure for the
recordings or firm details re: any release plans.
On the 17th of August of this year, however, the David Gilmour blog
had the following to reveal:
David is not working with The Orb on a new album, contrary to some
reports, but you may remember that he had been in the studio jamming
with Martin “Youth” Glover in recent months. (…) Alex Paterson was not
involved in the sole jamming session and the only plan initially was for
David to play guitar on that one track.
However, as it turns out and as you can see, the result of that jam
session has now been spread across the next Orb album, Metallic Spheres,
which will be released as ‘The Orb featuring David Gilmour’. So there
you have it. He was working on an album with The Orb. Sort of.
Floydian friction
If I may read a bit between the lines I feel some friction here between
Sir David and this Orb thingy. But the next day, David Gilmour's
official website
had the next comment:
David's 2009 jam session with ambient collective The Orb has grown into
an album, Metallic Spheres, to be released via Columbia/Sony Records in
October. David's contribution to the charity song Chicago, in aid of
Gary McKinnon, sparked the interest of producer Youth (Martin Glover),
who remixed the track and invited David to his studio for a recording
session.
With additional contributions from Orb co-founder Alex
Paterson, the album took shape from 2009 into 2010, eventually becoming
Metallic Spheres, to be released by The Orb featuring David Gilmour. (underlined
by FA.)
Bollocks
Calling LX Paterson an Orb co-founder is technically not untrue, but it
feels a little weird when you have just been presenting Martin 'Youth'
Glover. It is comparable to describing Syd Barrett as a Pink Floyd
co-founder while discussing Bob
Klose. Agreed, Youth (from Killing
Joke fame) was probably around when The Orb saw the light of day but
it is generally acknowledged that the band was formed in 1988 by Alex
Paterson and Jimmy
Cauty but not by Youth who only occasionally teamed up with
Alex Paterson as a temporary aid. Cauty's primary project however, the Kopyright
Liberation Front (with Bill Drummond), pretty soon outgrew The Orb
and when - at a certain point in time - some Orb remixes were released
in Germany as KLF remixes this provoked a rupture in the co-operation
between the duo as Alex and Jimmy started fighting over… copyrights.
After the split between KLF and The Orb Martin 'Youth' Glover helped LX
out with two tracks (on two separate albums): Little Fluffy Clouds (on
'Adventures', 1991) and Majestic (on U.F.Orb, 1992), but he never was a
member of the band and certainly not a founding member. In 2007 however,
Youth replaced Thomas Fehlmann and joined The Orb for a one album
project: The
Dream.
Update 2018: Youth can also be found on the 2018 'No Sounds Are
Out Of Bounds' and on a 2016 live CD and DVD release of the band.
...and gossip
Together with the announcement on David Gilmour's website, and then
we're back on the 18th of August of this year, a promotional video for
the Metallic Spheres album is uploaded to YouTube. Depicting only Youth
and David Gilmour several Orb fans wonder where LX Paterson, and thus
The Orb, fits in.
The first, original movie disappears after a couple of days for
so-called 'copyright' reasons and is rapidly replaced with a second
version (unfortunately taken down as well, now), containing some hastily
inserted images of LX Paterson strolling through the grasslands and
recording some outdoor musique concrète.
It feels, once again, as if the Floyd-Orb connection doesn't go down
well at the Gilmour camp. Alex Paterson's image, so it seems, has only
been included on the promo video after some pressure (from LX
himself) took place. But the above is of course all pure speculation and
not based upon any fact, so tells you Felix Atagong, who has been
closely following The Orb for over two decades.
Gary McKinnon
Bit by bit we learn how the album came into place. It all started with
David Gilmour's charity project for Gary
McKinnon, an X-Files adhering half-wit who hacked into American
military and NASA computers in order to find out about extra-terrestrial
conspiracy theories (read some more about that on: Metallic
Spheres). Because of this he faces extradition from England to the
USA where apparently they take these kind of idiots very seriously, see
also the 43rd president who governed the country from 2001 to 2009.
It is not quite clear if Gilmour asked Youth (David Glover) to make a
remix of the Chicago charity tune or if Youth got hold of the
project and proposed to help (I've come across both explanations). The
two may know each other through Guy Pratt who played in Glover's band Brilliant
in 1986 (LX Paterson was their roadie for a while). In 1990 Youth
founded Blue
Pearl with Durga
McBroom who had toured with Pink Floyd for the previous three years.
Amongst the session musicians on their Naked album are Guy Pratt,
David Gilmour and Rick Wright.
This isn't Glover's only connection with the Floyd however. In 1995 he
teamed up with Killing Joke colleague Jaz
Coleman to arrange and produce a symphonic tribute album: Us and
Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd, but only The Old Tree With Winding
Roots Behind The Lake Of Dreams remix from Time combines a
modern beat with romantic classical music.
Island Jam
To spice up the Chicago remix Youth invited David Gilmour in his home
studio and out of it came a twenty minutes guitar jam. Glover soon found
out that he could expand the session into an ambient suite and asked old
chum LX Paterson for some help. LX flavoured the pieces with typical
Orbian drones and samples, rather than turning this into a sheepish Fireman-clone.
The Orb featuring David Gilmour can only be a win/win situation.
Orb fans have dreamed about this collaboration for the past two decades
and that will add to the sales figures for sure. And although artist
royalties go to the support of Gary McKinnon there will always be a
spillover effect for the artists involved. That can only be good news
for The Orb whose last album Baghdad Batteries sunk faster than
the Kursk in the Barents Sea.
Rest us to say that an Orb album is an Orb album when it has got the
name Orb on it, whether you like it or not. (In the case of their Okie
Dokie album, not a bit).
Metallic Spheres
Metallic
Spheres starts with Gilmour's pedal steel guitar over some keyboard
drones that makes me think of those good old days when the KLF shattered
the world with their ambient masterpiece Chill
Out (LX Paterson - as a matter of fact - contributed to that album,
although uncredited). But soon after that Gilmour's guitar wanders off
in his familiar guitar style with axiomatic nods to The Wall and The
Division Bell albums. A welcome intermezzo is Black Graham
with acoustic guitar, not from Gilmour but by ragtime busker Marcia
Mello. The 'metallic side' flows nicely throughout its 29
minutes and has fulfilled its promise of being 'the ambient event of the
year' quite accurately.
The CD is divided into two suites: a 'metallic side' and a 'spheres
side' (and each 'side' is subdivided in five - not always
discernable - parts). The second suite however, is more of the same,
clearly lacks inspiration and ends out of breath at the 20 minutes mark.
So no wow! effect here (but no meh! either)... Youth has done what was
expected from him and produced an all-in-all agreeable but quite
mainstream product leaving ardent anoraky Orb fans with their hunger,
but perhaps winning a few uninitiated souls.
As far as I am concerned this is about the best Orb CD I have heard for
the past couple of years, but it is still far from Orblivion, U.F.Orb or
Ultraworld. But as this is 2010 already you won't hear me complaining.
Versions
In true Orbian tradition this album exists in different versions. There
is the regular UK version (with a 'black' cover) and the deluxe version
(with a 'white' cover). That last one has a bonus CD in a 3D60 headphone
remix, comparable to the holophonics system on Pink Floyd's 'The
Final Cut' album from 1983.
Update 2018: Just like 'holophonics' in the eighties, 3D60 no
longer exists. The 'special' effects can only be heard through a
headphone, but don't expect anything spectacular.
A Japanese enhanced Blu-spec release has two additional bonus tracks and
two videos. One of these extra tracks (remixes, actually) could also be
downloaded from The Orb website and from iTunes. One of the videos has
been made by Stylorouge, who worked with Storm Thorgerson on
several Floydian projects.
Last but not least there is a Columbia promo version, containing a
unique identification number to trace unauthorised redistribution (see
above picture). To our, but probably not to Gilmour's, amusement this
promo-CD is titled The Orb Vs Dave Gilmour (instead of David).
According to at least one Orb fan this version has a different mix than
the official release.
A couple of months ago a new Syd Barrett compilation was announced and
EMI (Harvest) was proud to proclaim that Syd Barrett had joined the
league of Jimi
Hendrix or Marc
Bolan, meaning that the man has got more compilation albums written
on his name than genuine albums.
Let's make a quick sum, shall we? Barrett, who was the founder of the
mythical band Pink
Floyd, was overtly present on their first album The
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. On the second album A
Saucerful Of Secrets he had already taken a sabbatical, and although
present on 3 tracks (out of 7) he only takes the vocal lead (and writing
credits) on the testamentary coda Jugband
Blues.
There are at least 7 Pink Floyd compilations that have Barrett's
(sometimes unreleased) work on it and the last one Echoes
(2001) turned Syd Barrett into an overnight millionaire. The fortieth
anniversary edition of Piper (2007) has (in the deluxe edition)
an extra CD containing some alternative versions and the Pink Floyd's
early singles as well.
Barrett's solo output in the early seventies is limited to two albums, The
Madcap Laughs and Barrett,
and that is all there is, give or take 5 or 6 compilations. The count
depends whether one catalogues the Opel
(1988) record as a compilation of alternative takes and unreleased
material or as a real 'third' solo album.
The most recent compilation 'An
Introduction To Syd Barrett' boasts that this is the first time in
history that Barrett's Pink Floyd and solo tracks have been compiled on
one disk. This is true, but… so what?
On the other hand a quick glance at the list
of unreleased material shows that there are about a dozen Pink Floyd
studio tracks from their Syd Barrett era, but alas this compilation
still doesn't contain any of them.
So what could possibly be the added value of this album, one might ask?
Storm Damage
Not its cover, that doesn't show Syd Barrett at all but that has been
created, as usual, by Storm
Thorgerson. Thorgerson, and more particularly his Hipgnosis
studio, made some landmark record sleeves in the Seventies and Eighties,
but he seems not able nowadays to sell his creations to influential
bands, unless you call the freaky weirdoes of The Mars Volta
influential of course. Thorgerson's contemporaneous work flirts a bit
too much with cheap kitsch and luckily there is still Pink Floyd Ltd
that keeps him away from the unemployment office. I'm quite fond of
Thorgerson's work and I do like the cover although most Syd Barrett fans
I frequent compare it with visual diarrhoea so I leave it to you to make
up your own mind.
Tracks Revisited
As a Barrett anorak I am not interested in the regular songs on this
compilation - as a matter of fact I didn't even listen to those - but I
jumped immediately on top of the so-called enhanced tunes. The
compilation boasts that 4 tracks have been remixed and one track has
been 'upgraded' with additional bass from David Gilmour who also
supervised the mixes. (The following review has been largely influenced
by Blade's
comments on the NPF
forum and MOB's
comments on the A
Fleeting Glimpse forum.)
Dominoes: the new mix has been so subtly done that there is
hardly any difference. The vocals are more emphasized and the backwards
guitar sounds a trifle clearer. Some corrections may have been done,
because on the original versions several (drum) parts were out of
'synch'. These errors have miraculously disappeared on the 2010 mix.
Octopus: this track is 7 seconds longer, due to the fact that a
'false' start has been added at the beginning. The "isn't it
good to be lost in the woods" vocals have been clarified and brought
to the fore and it could even be that its first part has been taken from
an alternative take (also a few drumbeats have been added that weren't
there on the 1970 version). Overall the muddled sound of vocals and
guitars have been cleaned.
She Took a Long Cool Look: this track has always been
called She Took A Long Cold Look in the past, but the
title has now been changed. This is one of so called 'live' bits from
Barrett's first album. These included false starts, bad guitar playing,
unstable singing and Barrett generally loosing it… David Gilmour said he
included these demos in 1970 to reveal Barrett in all his fragility, but
later regretted his choice…
The 2010 version snips some of the unnecessary background sounds
(Barrett turning some papers) and the guitar breakdown in the middle of
the song is replaced by some strumming from another take. And - as with
all of these remixes - Barrett's voice sounds more crisp than before and
with less disturbing echo.
Matilda Mother (Pink Floyd): the 40 years anniversary edition of Piper
already had this alternative take but in a much shorter version. This
one takes 50 seconds longer and has benefited from a real mix. Probably
the 2010 version is a sound-collage of several outtakes.
Here I Go: this little dance hall tune has always been my
favourite Barrett track. For over 40 years I have wondered how this song
really ended and now the ditty lasts 5 seconds longer. Gilmour has done
a fine job by adding extra bass and after my second listen I already
felt that this was the way it should always have been. (There is also a
tiny rhythm correction - compared with the original version - at 01:46.)
Personally I find it a bad judgment from Gilmour & Co to keep the fade
out but the closing chord I had been waiting for can still be heard. And
I know it's starting to sound repetitive, but Barrett's vocals have been
upgraded as well and sound crispier than ever. You don't need to buy the
album to listen to this track as a promo video has been put on the web
as well: Here
I Go (official video).
Update December 2019: Peudent, over at Late
Night, had some fun remastering the 2010 version of Syd Barrett’s Here
I Go. This version has got no fadeout and the ending can now be
heard at full volume. URL: https://voca.ro/3O3YGCsdWT7
The few remixes on this compilation are subtle, have been done with
great care and love for the original material so that my initial anoraky
opinion of 'don't touch the originals' has now been switched over to
'why didn't they simply enhance all tracks'?
But the real revelation of the album can't be found on plastic. The CD
contains a key to download the mythical Rhamadan track from the official
Syd Barrett website and this is what the next chapter is all about.
R(h)amadan
I won't get into the old story, legend or myth, of Rhamadan as it is all
old news by now. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit wrote a bit about it
in Anoraks
and Pontiacs and Rob Chapman in A
Very Irregular Head describes it as a 'conga-heavy jam session
lasting eighteen minutes and of little merit', although it is highly
doubtful that the biographer could get hold of the piece.
The only person, apart from some EMI alumni, who could listen to the
track in its full glory was David Parker, author of Random
Precision. In order to get EMI's permission he had to sign a 'scarily
draconian declaration', so scarily draconian that he even had to
delete a forum post wherein he had simply admitted it had been 'scarily
draconian'. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit sometimes threatens with
the Holy Igquisition but apparently that secret service is
peanuts compared to the EMI 'unlimited supply, there is no reason why'
storm troops.
David was the only author who could write, in detail, how the piece
sounded and as it is so damn accurate I see no point of trying to give
my own description.
Peter Bown announces Rhamadan take 1 over some bass and organ
noises. He pronounces the title Rarmardarn like a 1950's BBC
newsreader. The piece itself begins with the conga drums (probably Steve
Took from Tyrannosaurus Rex).
The bass comes in and immediately takes the lead role (whoever the bass
player is they are extremely proficient) with some very fast Stanley
Clarke style runs and slides in places. The vibes then begin to come in,
along with some disjointed organ chording (mostly on one chord). This
then continues for a couple of minutes with the bass leading over the
conga beat, vibes and organ chords. A piano then enters playing a loose
boogie rhythm, and someone starts playing some very staccato mellotron
notes as well. Things settle into a groove, and a second drummer joins
in, mainly on cymbals. After about 5 minutes Syd's guitar starts to
appear, playing muted chords to fill out the sound. The bass falls back
slightly, and the piano takes the lead, Syd's guitar feeding back
momentarily as he begins to play solo notes. (…)
The piece eventually starts to fizzle out with some mad staccato
mellotron, the ever present organ chord and a lot of bass improvisation
with a sprinkling of piano notes. Syd plays some open chord plucking and
everything gets rather free form with Syd letting his guitar build-up
feedback and then fades it out. (…)
Syd starts another riff but it begins to fade until the bass player
picks up on it, and everyone begins following along. Another crescendo
of feedback builds up as Syd picks out what sounds like the Close
Encounters three note theme (!). (…)
Things build up yet again, with everyone in random improvisation, then
everyone stops except the organ chord. The bassist begins a strident
riff, giving the vibes a chance to solo (with staccato mellotron
accompaniment). The bass rockets off into a hyper-drive riff, then
everything finally falls to bits, ending with our old friend the organ
chord drone, the mad mellotronist and a few bass notes.
We don't really know who are the players on Rhamadan, but Steve
Peregrin Took is a name that appears in almost all biographies.
Biographer Julian Palacios, however, seems to disagree now:
Talking to my friend GH today, he wrote: 'I don't think that Steve Took
is the conga player on these sessions. I knew Steve and discussed Syd
with him on a few occasions, he said that Syd had jammed with him round
at his flat and that he had recorded it, but there was never any mention
of going into a recording studio with Syd. My understanding was that
Steve didn't get pally with Syd until after his split from Marc (Bolan).
Back in 68 Tyrannosaurus Rex where gigging like crazy and still very
much a going concern.' (Taken from Late
Night Discussion Forum.)
Rhamadan isn't half as bad as everyone, who had never heard it, claimed
it to be. Especially when one remembers that the same biographers and
journalists tend to praise AMM, The Soft Machine or The Third Ear band
for their revolutionary musical approach. Rhamadan is of course a highly freakadelic
experiment, almost free-jazz in its approach, a genre Syd Barrett was
not unfamiliar with.
If you have bought the CD, Rhamadan can be downloaded (legally) from the
official Syd Barrett website, but unfortunately only in the MP3 format
with a rather cheapish 152kbs bitrate. But its bitrate is not the only
amateurish characteristic. While millions of people all over the world
have discovered MP3 tags, EMI is of the opinion that this invention is
way over their heads. The tags are all empty and reveal that the track
is untitled (Track 1), comes from an unknown album,
is from an unknown artist and from an unknown year. Not
even the Publisher and Copyright data are filled in. My 8-years old
godchild can rip MP3 tunes better than EMI does, she at least knows how
to attach a (sleeve) picture to the file. (Although I worked this out by
myself, Jen D at madcapslaughing
beat me by a day by publishing the same findings before me. As I haven't
got an irregular head I'll give this bloke the credits.)
While EMI has been nagging us for years that copying is killing music
a closer look on the MP3 tags reveals us that the file has been
converted with FreeRIP.
Here is the biggest music company in the world and it uses a freeware
version of a (quite good, I agree) MP3 converter to spread around a
track belonging to the founder of their second most commercially
successful band, next to The Beatles.
I know of the bad financial situation of the music company but I wasn't
aware that EMI was that close to bankrupt that they can't even afford a
29,75 dollar software program anymore.
Conclusion
None really. The best thing is to decide for yourself if the 5 remixes
and the 1 download are sufficient to buy the album. As a Barrett anorak
myself, I simply had no choice.
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above) Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 215. Parker,
David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p.
132-133.
A while ago it was announced
at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit that Julian Palacios' long
awaited Syd Barrett biography Dark Globe (Full title: Syd Barrett
& Pink Floyd: Dark Globe) had finally appeared in web shops all over the
world. Palacios' previous work Lost In The Woods already dates
from 1998 but is (was) still a classic work about Barrett.
Dark Globe 2010 is not an amended or appended Lost In The Woods,
Palacios didn't use the easy trick Mike Watkinson & Pete Anderson fell
for when they re-issued their Crazy Diamond biography, leaving
the (many) errors uncorrected and just adding an extra chapter about Syd
Barrett's passing. But I wouldn't go as far as the one critic who
claimed that Crazy Diamond is full of 'unsubstantiated nonsense' and
that it should come 'with a government health warning on the dust
jacket'. Crazy Diamond still takes a soft spot in my heart as it was the
first attempt at a serious Barrett biography.
But back to Julian Palacios. For those who want to immediately know if
Dark Globe is worth the investment, rather than meandering through this
review, I will quote Kiloh Smith from Laughing
Madcaps:
Just finished Dark Globe and... it's the best book about Syd Barrett
that was ever written. I'd say that Dark Globe is my favourite, followed
by Crazy Diamond, with A Very Irregular Head taking up a distant third.
(Full review at: sydbarrettpinkfloyd.com)
Probably this is the first time in history that Kiloh and I share the
same opinion, but he is not the only one praising Palacios. Fleeting
Glimpse gives the biography a perfect 10 and quite rightly so. And
Mark Paytress from Mojo also has some nice things to say (see left side
image).
I once noted down that the art of writing biographies is not in adding
details, but in weeding out the superfluous. Palacios is not entirely of
the same opinion and that is why my review took so long to appear here.
Dark Globe is packed with details, quite an anorak's dream, and it does
need some concentration. In my case I found it better to savour the
different paragraphs, one at a time, sometimes even going back a bit,
than to read the book in one big afternoon chunk.
Palacios has unearthed details that no one has ever found or published
before and, this has to be said as well, not all of those are relevant
to the average Barrett fan.
Postman Syd
Did you know that Syd Barrett had a job as a postman in his teenager
years, delivering Christmas cards during the holidays? I didn't. Not
only does Palacios reveal that but he also points out that the underwear
fetishist who was immortalised in Pink Floyd's first single Arnold Layne
could have been a Royal Mail post van driver.
Those familiar with the Pink Floyd's early history remember that the
band lived, 64-65-ish, in Mike
Leonard's house, an architect who introduced the amateurish R&B gang
to light-shows and avant-garde music. Leonard also played a mean piano
and replaced Rick Wright for a while, what made him think he was a
member of what was ironically called Leonard's
Lodgers.
Every student who has been living in a community knows that, sooner or
later, food will start disappearing. Stanhope Gardens was no exception
to that and Rick Wright used to keep his morning cornflakes inside a
locked cupboard, fearing that Roger Waters would otherwise steal his
beloved morning cereals. The mystery has lingered on for over 4 decades
but Julian Palacios has finally discovered who really nicked Wright's
breakfast: not Roger Waters but a boarder named Peter
Kuttner. Utterly irrelevant but fun to read. The only fear I have
now is that Roger Waters will probably write a concept album about it
once he finds out.
Not all of this biography reads like a biography. At certain points
Palacios can't hide any-more he is a writer at heart, with poetical
streaks, obviously regretting that he wasn't around in those underground
days. What to say about this:
The face came out from under the murky swell of psychedelic oil lights,
like a frame around a picture. A pale, handsome face with thick silky
hair and a white satin shirt. Something bright and small seemed to
twinkle in his eyes, vanished, then winkled once more like a tiny star.
(p .118)
Palacios adds many song descriptions and can get quite lyrical about
chord progressions. Personally I can't be bothered as I don't hear the
difference between an A and an F anyway. These parts read like a Korean
DVD recording manual to me but I suppose that any amateur musician will
enjoy them. Julian has been doing more than his homework and for many
early Pink Floyd songs he traces back musical or textual references
(today we would call that sampling), but he isn't too snotty to
give due credits to where they belong.
Palacios has an encyclopaedic musical knowledge and halfway the book I
regretted I didn't note down all songtitles he cites. Songs Barrett
liked, songs Barrett played and rehearsed in his youth, songs that
influenced some of his later work. Adding these would make a nice
cd-box, not unlike the cover disks Mojo magazine sometimes issues.
Arnold Rainey
Julian's observations can sometimes be a bit über-detailed. Arnold
Layne, the famous song about the cross-dressing knicker-thief,
contains a slight musical nod to the 1928 Ma Rainey song Prove
It On Me Blues, not coincidentally another song about
cross-dressing. As I am tone-deaf - a condition I share with Roger
Waters, so it mustn't be all bad as he made a fortune with it - I don't
hear any familiarity between both musical pieces but blues scholar John
Olivar says there is and Julian Palacios acknowledges it. I simply
believe them.
Other links are easier to grasp for a simple man like me, like the fact
that Jennifer Gentle (the protagonist from the Lucifer
Sam song) can be traced back to a medieval ballad
where it goes:
There were three sisters fair and bright, Jennifer, Gentle
and Rosemary... And they three loved one valiant knight— As
the dow [dove] flies over the mulberry-tree.
There is one single remark in Palacios book that would create a small
storm if its subject happened to be Lennon or Hendrix. In August 1974
Barrett recorded some demos for a third album that never saw the light
of day. Barrett had no new songs and he just tried out some blues
variations like he used to do more than a decade before in his mother's
living room. Initially the 1974 demos were noted down as 'various
untitled oddments' and the individual titles these tracks have now
were given by producer Pete Jenner to distinguish the different parts.
In Boogie
#1 (there is also #2 and #3) traces of Bo
Diddley's Pretty
Thing can be found back. In January 2010 Palacios found
out that the track nicknamed John
Lee Hooker is in fact a rendition of Mojo
Hand from Lighting'
Hopkins. That particular titbit didn't even provoke a ripple in the
usual stormy Barrett pond.
Palacios adds layers on layers of information. If you happen to be
amongst the dozen or so readers who remember the 1989 Nick Sedgwick
novel Light Blue With Bulges you might have wondered who was the beatnik
behind the espresso machine (and with his hands in the till) of a famous
Cambridge coffee bar. Don't look any further, Palacios will tell you
exactly who operated the espresso machine, how the coffee bar was called
and even more... reveal the brand of the Italian espresso machine...
only... I would like to pass this information to you but I can't find it
back right now as... and here is my biggest dissatisfaction with this
book... Dark Globe contains no index.
Rollodex
In the past I have written some harsh words about biographies and
reference books that omit an index:
Unfortunately the book [Pink
Floyd FAQ] has got no index, what duly pisses me off, so if you want
to know something about, let's say: You Gotta Be Crazy, there is no
other way to find it than to start reading the bloody thing all over
again. So called biographies (…) and reference books without an index
(or an alphabetical or chronological filing system) are immediately put
aside by me and won't be touched again. Ever.
I know for sure that Prince
Stanisla(u)s Klossowski de Rola, better known as Stash, is
cited in Dark Globe. But if I urgently need this information for a post
at the Holy Church, to answer a question on the Late Night Syd Barrett
forum or just to ease my mind, I will only be able to consult Palacios'
(now defunct) 1998 biography Lost In the Woods (pages 186-93),
Mark Blakes' 2007 Pigs Might Fly (pages 81 & 99) or Rob Chapman's
2010 A Very Irregular Head (p. 278) although that last insists to
call the dandy prince de Rollo.
Dark Globe is by near and by far the best Syd Barrett biography ever,
but not having an index is (in my awkward opinion) unforgivable as it
diminishes its traceability near to factor zero. And that's a shame... I
do know that indexes are but a geeks' dream and that most people don't
bother with those, but my ultimate wet dream consists of reading
bibliographies that have half a dozen footnotes per page. Maybe I am the
problem?
No 4 Yes
With hindsight it is easy to call Syd Barrett a genius, but not
everybody was of that opinion in 1966. Here is what Peter
Banks, from Syn
(a precursor of progressive rock-band Yes)
had to say: “Whatever night they played was the worst night of the week.
(…) A bunch of guys making noise and wearing make-up.” Perhaps that is
why Nick Mason quipped, years later, that Johnny Rotten would have
looked quite ridicule in a 'I hate Yes' t-shirt.
Pink Floyd was probably not the best band of the psychedelic bunch, but
they surely were the loudest, even outdoing The Who in volume at the Psychedelicamania
happening on the last day of 1966. A reporter of the Daily Mail, armed
with a sound meter, reported on 'pop above the danger level' and warned
for permanent damage to the ears.
In just a couple of months Barrett had not only shifted from quiet blues
to avant-garde 120 decibel hard rock, he also traded his daily cup of
earl green tea for LSD, mandrax and generally everything that could be
easily swallowed or smoked.
The previous reads kind of funny but it is an infinite sad story that
has been underrated by witnesses, fans and biographers alike. All kind
of excuses have been used not to turn Barrett into a hopeless drug case:
his father's death, the pressure of his band-mates, managers and record
company, even the stroboscopic effect of the liquid light shows...
(although of course all these things may have weakened his
self-defence). In my opinion, Julian Palacios manages to get the tone
right and he consecrates some poignantly written paragraphs to the
darker side of the psychedelic summer.
Dysfunction
In April of this year the Church of Iggy the Inuit published the We
are all made of stars post. The article tried to remember two people
of the early Floydian era: Ian Pip Carter, a long-time friend of Gilmour
and a Floyd-roadie who had to fight an heroine addiction for most of his
life and; John Paul Ponji Robinson who tried, in vain, to find inner
piece in eastern mysticism.
Palacios adds another Cantabrigian: Johnny Johnson, who in a paranoid,
probably drug-infected, streak jumped from a six-storey window, survived
the fall, but would eventually commit suicide a few years later.
Hendrix, Morrison, Jones and Joplin: 'each victim to the Dionysian
excess they embodied'. Alice
Ormsby-Gore: overdose (her friend Eric Clapton had more luck).
Julian Ormsby-Gore: suicide. Paul
Getty: heroine paralysed him for life. Talitha
Dina Pol, his wife: overdose. The list is long and those who
survived were not always the lucky ones...
Although there are still people who think that Syd Barrett turned
avant-garde during the Floyd's first tour in America, Nick Mason, in his
typical no-nonsense style, put it otherwise:
Syd went mad on that first American tour. He didn't know where he was
most of the time. He detuned his guitar on stage. He just stood there
rattling strings, a bit weird even for us. (Cited in Dark Globe, but
originally taken from a May 1994 Mojo interview.)
Barrett's situation reminds me of an Alice Flaherty quote I encountered
in a recent Douglas Coupland novel:
De-romanticizing Dysfunction:
All the theories linking creativity to mental illness are really
implying mild disease. People may be reassured by the fact that almost
without exception no one is severely ill and still creative. Severe
mental illness tends to bring bizarre preoccupation and inflexible
thought.
As the poet Sylvia
Plath said, 'When you're insane , you're busy being insane – all the
time when I was crazy , that's all I was.
Trip to Sanity
There is the somewhat romantic viewpoint of Duggie Fields, but basically
it tells just the same:
He (Syd) could lie in bed thinking he could do anything in the
world he wanted. But when he made a decision that limited his
possibilities.
The problem, for those who follow the hypothesis Syd had a problem, was
that for Barrett there weren't any possibilities left, although record
company, colleagues and friends mildly tried to lure him into the studio
or invite him for an impromptu jam. But to paraphrase Sylvia Plath: Syd
was too busy being insane, and all the time he was crazy that was all he
was able doing.
While at different forums people are arguing, even today, that
hallucinogenic drugs are harmless
Palacios retaliates by simply listing musicians who had to fight
drug-related-burn-outs: Peter
Green, Roky
Erikson, Chris
Kefford, Shelagh
McDonald, Skip
Spence, Brian
Wilson... It took these people literally decades to crawl back to normal
life after years of misery. Also Barrett hoped to overcome his
condition one day as was proven by a handwritten note in his copy of The
Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry. Syd bloody well understood what was wrong
with him and we – the fans – don't fucking know how hard it was for him.
A dark spot that even Palacios can't clarify is 'Syd's lost weekend'
that roughly went from 1975 to the early Eighties. The first 400 pages
describe Barrett's public life from the mid-Sixties until the pivotal
event in 1975 when Syd entered the Wish You Were Here recording
sessions. The 30 remaining years of his life are dealt with in a mere 40
pages. Even for Palacios there is nothing to dig. (Rob Chapman managed
to add some anecdotes from Barrett's Cambridge life – although some are
disputed while you read this - but he didn't unearth anything new about
Syd's Chelsea Cloister days either.)
Atagong Strikes Again
The following paragraph will probably not add any points to my Barrett
reputation scale, already at ground zero level, but who cares. Just
before publishing this text I checked the official Syd Barrett website
to see if Dark Globe, the biography, is mentioned there. It isn't.
It comes as no surprise as its main function apparently is to sell
t-shirts, even on the discography page you'll look in vain for the
latest Barrett compilation 'An Introduction to...' (review at: Gravy
Train To Cambridge). I am pretty sure its web master knows
everything about Flash ActionScript but is unable to recognise a
Barrett-tune even if whistled through his arse. When the site started in
December 2008 (a temporary page had already been present a few weeks before)
it managed to get the release dates wrong from all known Syd Barrett
solo albums. Yes, both of them. It is not that Barrett has been
as prolific as Frank Zappa who released records for breakfast.
Fan art was mistakenly published as genuine Syd Barrett art and the
bibliography contained a non existent book that had been designed as a
joke by former Late Night member Stanislav. Even today slightly
photoshopped pictures can be found on its pictures page. Apparently the
official Syd Barrett website moguls have got no problems that their main
source of income swallowed pills by the gallon and fornicated everything
female within a 3 miles radius but depicting Syd Barrett with a cigarette
in his mouth obviously is a bridge too far.
Clearly I am getting too old for this hobby of mine but I hope I got the
message through that Syd Barrett is a bit more than a cheap shirt. Dark
Globe by Julian Palacios more than proves this and contrary to my
threatening promise of above I'm immediately going to read it again.
Conclusion
A certain Felix Atagong calls himself laughingly the Reverend of the
Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. But now he realises: Julian Palacios is
our prophet. And Dark Globe is our holy book, but I wouldn't mind an
index though.
Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus,
London, 2010. 443 pages, 24 photo pages. ISBN10:
85965 431 1 ISBN13: 978 0 85965 431 9. Amazon (UK) link.(The Church is not affiliated with or endorsed by this company.)
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 143. Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 336. Coupland,
Douglas: Player One, William Heinemann, London, 2010, p. 223.
Coupland himself cites from a Alice Flaherty book called The
Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the
Creative Brain. Music score taken from: Riddles
Wisely Expounded(pdf document).
Barrett,
the definitive visual companion to the life of Syd Barrett, by Russell
Beecher & Will Shutes arrived at Atagong Mansion on the
second day of its release, Friday the 18th of March, but I have to
admit, I didn't really look at it, apart from some glancing through its
pages.
The reason is simple, the book is a visual biography collecting
many (unseen) photographs of Syd Barrett and his band The Pink Floyd,
facsimiles from letters to Libby Gausden and Jenny Spires and the very
first detailed catalogue of Syd's paintings, and I am more a man of
words, too many words some people say (and perhaps there is a a yet
undiscovered trail of prudence in me, as I am a bit reluctant to read
Syd's letters written to Libby and Jenny).
I care for Syd the musician but I don't get overexcited when a new
Barrett (or vintage Pink Floyd) picture appears on the web. First: this
has been happening on a regular basis since Barrett's death when people
suddenly remember that they have got an exclusive picture lying on their
attic. Second: these pictures will arrive, in due time, on the more than
excellent Have You Got It Yet? v2.0 Vol 11 Photo/Info DVD-Rom from Mark
Jones that can be freely downloaded at several places on the web, but I
prefer Yeeshkul
as it is the 'official' home for Floydian audio & video collectors.
Although not entirely legal this picture DVD was asked for by the Pink
Floyd management who gave Mark Jones a copy of Oh
By The Way, the Pink Floyd 14 CD compilation, in return. I am quite
convinced that the pictures of the Barrett visual companion will, one
day, mysteriously appear on a new release.
Photographs (editor: Russell Beecher)
Barrett is roughly divided into three unequal parts. Part one #1 shows
many unseen and previously unpublished pictures of vintage Pink Floyd,
#2 has pictures from the Syd Barrett solo era, about 110 pages in total.
They are printed in big format (one photo per page or double page, many
pictures have been spliced), in high quality and 'digitally' restored.
Most of the pages have a description of the picture, the date it was
taken and an appropriate quote or anecdote from the Cambridge mafia
or the photographer in question.
A so-called signature or limited edition has got a third, separate,
photo series by Irene Winsby, but to acquire these additional 72
pages you have to cough up an extra 235 £ (282 €). Unfortunately for me
the signature issue is bound in leather and as a strict vegetarian it is
against my conscience to skin a cow to watch a Barrett picture. If you
find this silly just try to imagine what the master of Sant
Mat would have said to Syd Barrett about that.
(A short description of the picture section can be consulted at: Rockadolly.)
Letters (editor: Russell Beecher)
Part two, the shortest one with 25 pages, is destined to letters from
Syd to Libby Gausden, Jenny Spires and ends with the famous little
twig poem to Viv Brans. Tim Willis already described some of these
letters in his Madcap biography, but didn't actually put these in
print (with one exception and about 4 times smaller in size).
Anoraks know that Syd decorated his letters with funny doodles and this
section is obviously more interested in the drawings than in the actual
letters. Libby and Jenny give cute explanations in what probably was a
very weird menage-à-trois (our quatre or quarante,
if we may believe the rumours about Syd's omnivorous female appetite).
Art (editor: Will Shutes)
Section three (over 90 pages) is what everybody has been waiting for,
for all these years. At least that is why I have bought the book for.
For ages fans have been drooling over Syd, the painter, but I never
really bothered. I did not put Syd Barrett in the same category as Ron
Wood and Grace
Slick who also smear paint on canvas (and that's about all that can
be said about them), but I adhered the theory that was written down by Annie
Marie Roulin in The Case of Roger Keith 'Syd' Barrett (Fish
Out Of Water, 1996).
The symmetries among the geometrical shapes painted by Barrett show an
embarrassing absence of 'concept', of hidden flaming which makes
doubtful the real artistic value of these works. As to the technique
they can compete only with works by low talented students of low
secondary school.
In other words, paintings of Barrett may have been slightly therapeutic
(and this can be debated: art sessions can also have the uncanny feature
of sliding a mentally unstable person further into regression) but - if
one can fully grasp Anne Marie Roulin's Italo-English - they
could certainly not be considered as art with a capital A. A daring
theory and certainly not liked by many Barrett fans, nor by his family,
and that is why journalist Luca Ferrari invented a female alter ego to
publish this controversial thesis (Luca's confession in Italian,
and an English translation on Late
Night.)
In the past, biographies have tried to convince the reader that Barrett
was an art-painterpur sang, but none of these could win
me over, basically because writing about paintings without seeing the
actual work (or only two or three foggy examples) is like talking about
music without listening to it. For the first time in history a book
publishes Syd's whole oeuvre or what is left of it, about 100 of
his paintings; and Will Shutes has written an impressive 25 pages long
essay about Barrett's canvas outings throughout the years. While reading
the excellent essay one is obliged to constantly switch from text to
illustration and luckily the book has two ribbon-markers to facilitate
this multi-tasking.
Shutes admits that Barrett's work lacks 'consistency', a remark
originally made by Duggie Fields and cited in Rob Chapman's A Very
Irregular Head, but he immediately turns this into a plus factor.
Will concludes:
"The variety this implies is at the core of his originality."
, but one could use exactly the same reasoning to deduce that Barrett's
artwork isn't original at all.
Just like Julian Palacios
in Dark Globe has tracked down musical influences in Syd
Barrett's discography, Shutes cites several examples for Barrett's
graphical work. If there is one work of Barrett that stands out (in my
opinion, FA) it is the 1964-ish Untitled 15 (Cat. 20) lino print
with its evaporating crosses, but Barry Miles (also in A Very Irregular
Head) explains it has been clearly influenced by Nicolas
Staël, although Shutes reveals that there must have been some
secret Paul
Klee ingredient at work as well.
Rosemary Breen told Luca Ferrari that Barrett could make ten paintings a
day, and even if this was exaggerated the one hundred in the Barrett
book only represent a small percentage of his output. Although nobody
actually witnessed Barrett destroying his work, it is assumed he burned
them or threw them in the rubbish bin. Some have said that Barrett
destroyed only those paintings that weren't perfect to him, but actually
he destroyed them all although some seem to have survived for a couple
of months before disappearing. The few exceptions are those he gave away
to family or visiting friends. Beecher & Shutes could trace 49 surviving
artworks by Syd Barrett and were lucky that Rosemary found some photo
albums of Syd's art. For most of his life Roger Barrett had the weird
habit of photographing his work before destroying it, as if he wanted
the destruction to be a bit less final. Opinions differ as well why
Barrett did this, and range from a mental disorder to an artistic
concept. Will Shutes:
Like Rauschenberg's
erasure
of a drawing by de
Kooning in 1953, Barrett's act of destruction is not a negation – it
achieves something new. Barrett is doing something when he destroys what
he has done, not merely erasing it.
Even a Barrett scholar can have it wrong sometimes, the author describes
an Arnold Layne flyer, allegedly dating from March 1967, as designed by
Syd Barrett, unaware of the fact that it is fan-art, dating from the
late seventies, early eighties, and published in a Barrett fanzine. A
quick glance on Mark Jones' HYGIY picture DVD would have settled that
once and for all (remarked by Mark Jones at Late Night: Barrett
Book).
What intrigues me is that Roger Barrett continued to make abstract and
realistic paintings, as if he was afraid to make an irrevocable choice.
Personally I find his water-coloured landscapes or florals
uninteresting, although they do show some métier, especially
compared with the abstract works of the seventies or eighties that are
visually more compelling but technically mediocre. I'm quite fond of Untitled
67 (2005) that represents a pie chart of the summer and winter
solstices, although some
will of course recognise it as a pastiche of the Wish
You Were Herecover
art. That's the main deviation of the maniacal Pink Floyd and Syd
Barrett fan, seeing links that (perhaps) aren't really there.
This book contains the best descriptions and illustrations of Syd's
artwork, it is a collector's dream, but in the end Will Shutes can not
convince me that Barrett was a graphical artist in the true sense
of the word. It's a matter of personal opinion and I'm not sure if
Barrett knew it himself or if he even cared.
Conclusion
I hope the authors will not hold it against me if I tell that this book
is not destined for the average Floyd or Barrett fan. It contains no
juicy stories of feeding Syd biscuits through a closed locker door. Its
sole purpose is to ease the hunger of the Barrett community that is
easily recognised by its general daftness and its deep pockets.
Despite the blurb that states the opposite Barrett is not essential for
the music loving fan, but the book is no waste of time for those that
want to acquire it either. Barrett has been made with love, caring and
respect for its subject, is a work of art and quality and has been
authorised by the Estate of Roger Keith 'Syd' Barrett. But at 90 £
(108 €) for the classic edition (including delivery) it is also pretty
expensive, perhaps not overpriced, but still a lot of money.
Introduction
In his witty introduction Russell Beecher writes that over the years
there was "a need for a well-researched, intelligent, and
well-thought-through account of Syd's life and work". I completely
agree. He then continues by stating that this was fulfilled with the
publication of "Rob Chapman's excellent An Irregular Head in 2010".
Thank you, Russell Beecher, but I prefer to make up my own mind. In my
humble opinion Chapman's biography fails against at least one of the
qualities you have mentioned above. Those in need for an independent
opinion can consult Christopher Hughes's Irregular Head review at Brain
Damage, by and large the best Pink Floyd fan-site in the world.
Russell Beecher proceeds:
An Irregular Head is the definitive textual work on Syd. What you now
hold is the definitive visual work on Syd's artistic life. The two
books compliment one another.
Did I just pay 90 £ for a vaguely concealed commercial, wished for by
the Barrett Estate? The Barrett book is quite exceptional and possibly
'the definitive visual work on Syd's artistic life' indeed, but linking
its destiny to An Irregular Head, way off definitive if I am
still allowed to express my opinion, undermines its own qualities. This
feels like reserving a table at Noma
in Copenhagen to hear René
Redzepi announce that the food will reach the level of the local
McDonald's. Can I have some ketchup on my white truffles, please?
Some will find me overreacting again, but I had to get this off my
chest. Although a bit superfluous, and destined for the capitalist über-Syd-geek
alone, Barrett is far too luxurious and well-researched to have its
image tramped down.
The Church wishes to thank: Dan5482, Mark Jones, PoC (Party of Clowns)
and the beautiful people at Late Night.
Sources (other than internet links mentioned above): Beecher,
Russell & Shutes, Will: Barrett, Essential Works Ltd, London,
2011, p. 10, 11, 145, 162, 163, 170, 175. Chapman, Rob: A Very
Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 49, 232. Ferrari,
Luca & Roulin, Annie Marie: A Fish Out Of Water, Stampa
Alternativai, Rome, 1996, p. 31, 95, 97.
Yesterday, on Friday the 11th of June 2011, the Reverend of the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit was waiting on a bench at the central bus
station when a man addressed him in French, but he soon switched over to
Dutch.
"I see you are reading a nice book about Pink Floyd. I used to be a Pink
Floyd fan myself. Syd Barrett, the madcap loves."
At least it sounded like 'the madcap loves' in my ears and not 'the
madcap laughs', but perhaps the man had just a small problem with
English pronunciation. Never have made that link myself, I can only
smilingly agree that the madcap loves is one of the better
Floydian slips ever.
The madcap loves, I love it.
But perhaps I just misheard the thing, my ears aren't any more what they
used to be, after having been mistreated by Iron Maiden on my iPod for
the last lustrum.
Mad cat's something you can't explain
A trademark rhyme in Barrett's Octopus
song is the line that named the album:
The madcaplaughed at the man on the border Heigh-ho,
Huff the Talbot.
But Rob Chapman, in an interesting YouTube interview
about his biography A
Very Irregular Head, is of the opinion that Barrett did not sing mad-cap
but mad cat. In that case the title of Barrett's first solo
album is based upon a misunderstanding from producer David
Gilmour.
The mad cat laughed at the man on the border Heigh-ho,
Huff the Talbot.
Since Paul Belbin's excellent cyber-essay 'Untangling
the Octopus' (2005), hosted at the Church with the author's
permission, we know that the Octopus song (also titled Clowns
and Jugglers in an earlier stage) is packed with obscure literary
references, disclaiming the rumour that Barrett wrote his songs in a
drug influenced frenzy. One of the characters ripped by Syd Barrett
comes from an anonymous nursery rhyme called 'Huff
the Talbot and our cat Tib':
Huff the talbot and our cat Tib They took up sword and
shield, Tib for the red rose, Huff for the white, To fight upon
Bosworth field.
For the adherers of the mad cat theory it is perhaps of importance here
that the dog's adversary in the battle of Bosworth
just above is not a mad-cap but a cat called Tib.
Rob Chapman also mentions nonsense poet Edward
Lear as a further influence on Barrett but he didn't catch the
following poem:
There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the
utmost disorder; He danced with the cat, And made
tea in his hat, Which vexed all the folks on the Border.
You don't need to be a genius to reconstruct how the dancing cat from
Lear's man on the border and Tib, the warrior cat at Bosworth field,
amalgamated into the mad cat character in Octopus.
But, as with all things Syd, things aren't always that simple. The
madcap believers have a point as well as a madcap galloping chase does
appear in an early incarnation of Clowns and Jugglers:
Sit up, touching hips to a madcap galloping chase "Cheat"
he cried shouting “Kangaroo!”
The wind one morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, “Now for a frolic!
now for a leap! Now for a madcap, galloping chase! I’ll
make a commotion in every place!”
In that case David Gilmour mistook one line for the other and the
album's title may have been taken from a quote that didn't make it on
the album.
Salvation Came Lately
But the above has got absolutely nothing to do with today's article and
the Reverend duly apologises for the confusion.
Sitting on a bench at the bus station he was addressed by a man who had
found a common point of interest: Pink
Floyd. To prove that the traveller wasn't talking bollocks, the
sharp-dressed man suddenly sang the following lines from Jugband
Blues.
I don't care if the sun don't shine and I don't care if nothing is
mine and I don't care if I'm nervous with you I'll do my loving in
the winter...
Asked to sing a favourite line from a Floyd tune (luckily that never
happens) I would never quote an early song, so the choice of this man
was quite interesting, to say the least. Unfortunately, the strophe was
followed by the announcement that he didn't listen to the Floyd any
more, only to religious music.
To my shame I have to admit that the Reverend didn't see it coming that
another Reverend was trying to lure him into the tentacles of another
Church... Coincidentally we had to take the same bus and we talked like
close friends until it was time for the ambassador of god to leave the
ambassador of Iggy.
Good Vibrations
The 'book' I was reading wasn't a book but a special 82 pages issue from
the French rock magazine Vibrations,
entirely dedicated to Pink Floyd (7,90 €). Printed on luxurious glossy
paper it assembles articles (translated in French) from well known Q,
Mojo and NME journalists, such as Martin Aston, the Church's partner in
crime Mark
Blake, Pat Gilbert, Chris Salewicz and the French Aymeric Leroy, who
apparently has written an acclaimed biography on the band: 'Pink Floyd: Plongée
dans l'oeuvre d'un groupe paradoxal'.
The times are long gone when I bought everything that was from far or
nearby Pink Floyd related, I even resisted buying Pink Floyd coffee mugs
a couple of week ago, something that would have been impossible for me
in the past millennium, so here is a biography I wasn't aware of. Not
that I am planning to buy it. There isn't one single French Pink Floyd
or Syd Barrett biography that doesn't clash with my personal beliefs of
what a good biography should be.
Update 2011 06 20: Unfortunately the Internet isn't the safe
place any more where you can insult someone without being noticed.
Aymeric Leroy got hold of this post and wanted to set a few things
straight.
Thanks for mentioning my book on your blog. I'd just like to point out
that it isn't a "biography", more like a critical assessment of the
band's entire discography, which does include background info of a
biographical nature, but primarily an analysis of the music and lyrics.
The stuff I wrote for the special issue of "Vibrations" is expanded from
the more biographical passages of the book, but the book isn't an
"expanded" version of those. There are other people who did a great job
telling the band's history, and I relied on their work, but my reason
for adding yet another book to the impressive PF bibliography was to try
and do something different - write about the actual music for at least
75% of the book.
Duly noted, Aymeric, and perhaps the Church will have a go at your book
then, one of these days...
Uncut and uncombed
It promises to be a hot Pink Floyd year, this year, and the makers of Uncut
magazine have issued a 146 pages Pink Floyd special in their The
Ultimate Music Guide series. It isn't such a classy edition as the
French Vibrations, but of course the good news is that it
contains at least twice as much information. With at least one article
or interview per Pink Floyd record this obviously is the 'better buy' of
the two, although the initial set-up is more or less the same. The Uncut
special assembles old articles and a few new ones and promises to be an
enjoyable read.
That an enjoyable read isn't always the same as an accurate read proves
Allan Jones' The Madcap Laughs & Barrett article on pages 32 till 35. He
starts with mentioning that Syd Barrett entered Studio 3 on the 6th of
May 1968, for the first of six sessions that would follow. I don't know
what it is with this 6-sessions-myth but Rob Chapman claims exactly the
same in his biography. As I always seem to have recalled 9 sessions
instead of 6 it is time for yet another anoraky investigation.
So not for the first time in my career as Reverend of the Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit I have counted the 1968 Madcap recording dates, as
noted down in David Parker's excellent sessionography Random
Precision. It all starts in the beginning of May.
1968 05 06 – In the morning EMI engineers had been transferring
two Pink Floyd tracks 'In the Beechwood' (aka 'Down in the
Beechwoods') and 'Vegetable Man' for Syd Barrett to work on, but when
Barrett finally arrived he decided to record two new songs instead:
'Silace Lang' (aka 'Silas Lang') and 'Late Night'. Session One.
According to the Allan Jones article Barrett recorded the rambling
'Rhamadan' the day after. Wrong. The next day would have been the
seventh of May, but Barrett only re-entered the studio one week later.
1968 05 13 – 'Silas Lang' (take 1) and 'Late Night' (take 6),
were worked on / transferred by Peter Jenner. It is not clear if Syd
Barrett was present in the studio or if this was merely a technical
session. Of course this could have been one of those 'chaotic' sessions
where Barrett simply didn't show up, with Peter Jenner trying to salvage
the furniture by using the spare time for some producer’s work. Session
Two.
1968 05 14 – 'Rhamadan', 'Lanky' (Pt. 1&2), 'Golden Hair'.
Obviously Barrett and three session musicians were in the studio,
although nobody seems to remember who the backing band members really
were. Session Three.
1968 05 21 – 'Late Night', 'Silace Lang'. This was the day when
Syd Barrett forgot to bring his guitar to the studio and Peter Jenner
had to rent one for £10.50. Always a kind of a joker, our Syd. Session
Four.
1968 05 28 – 'Golden Hair', 'Swan Lee' (aka 'Silace Lang'),
'Rhamadan'. This session also included (the same?) three session
musicians. Session Five.
1968 06 08 – Superimposition of titles recorded on 6th, 14th,
21st & 29th [wrong date, FA] of May, 1968, so read the red
form notes. Peter Jenner made a provisional tracklist for what could
have been Barrett's first album:
Silas Lang Late Nights (sic) Golden Hair Beechwoods (originally
recorded with Pink Floyd) Vegetable man (originally recorded with
Pink Floyd) Scream Your Last Scream (sic, originally recorded with
Pink Floyd) Lanky Pt 1 Lanky Pt 2
Looking like a Barrett's fan wet dream the above track listing debunks
the story - still popular at certain disturbed Barrett circles - that
the band Pink Floyd and its members deliberately boycotted their former
colleague.
Barrett was apparently present at this session as some guitar overdubs
were recorded for 'Swan Lee' (the right title of that track still wasn't
decided). Session Six.
1968 06 14 – cancelled session
1968 06 20 – tape transfers and overdubs on 'Late Night' (noted
down as 'Light Nights'), 'Golden Hair', 'Swanlee' (again another way of
naming this track). Syd Barrett probably did some vocal overdubs. Session
Seven.
1968 06 27 – 'Swanlee', 'Late Night', 'Golden Hair'. Tape
transfers and possible (vocal) overdubs. This is a bit of a mystery
session as the archives of EMI aren't clear what really happened. Session
Eight.
1968 08 20 – 'Swan Lee', 'Late Nights', 'Golden Hair', 'Clowns &
Jugglers'. First appearance of the track that would later be named
Octopus. Session Nine.
Session nine is where Peter Jenner decided to pull the plug, and unless
you believe in the conspiracy theory that Jenner was a spy for the Pink
Floyd camp, there must have been a valid reason for it.
So there we have it, the nine chaotic Madcap sessions of the year 1968.
Of course it is clear where the six sessions explanation comes from, if
one omits the second session where Barrett probably never cared to show
up and some tape transfer and overdub sessions you have successfully
diminished nine sessions into six.
It all is a matter of interpretation: at one side you have those who
argue that Barrett recorded a nice collection of great dance songs in
only six sessions, at the other side you have those (including producer,
manager and personal friend Peter Jenner) who claim that nine sessions
weren't enough to produce three decent demos. As always the truth lies
somewhere in the middle.
So the six session myth, as noted down by Allan Jones in the Uncut Pink
Floyd 'Ultimate Music Guide' might not be so far off the truth.
Camera Kids
Another misty myth hangs around the cover shoot of the album. Allan
Jones bluntly states, more out of ignorance, I presume, than of
knowledge, that Mick Rock was responsible for the cover. The official
version goes that the pictures, used for the cover, were taken by Storm
Thorgerson, who happened to be at the same place at the same time
(as the picture at the left side proves). The Holy Church of Iggy the
Inuit has already spilled lots of bits and bytes about The Madcap Laughs photo
sessions (in plural), so we won't go further into that.
Iggy 'Eskimo' Rose revealed to Mark Blake that other shots were taken as
well:
I don't think Storm and Mick were very impressed by them. If you've ever
seen the cover of the Rod Stewart album, Blondes Have More Fun, they
were a bit like that... Of me and Syd. There were others of me and Syd,
as well, which remind me of the picture of John and Yoko [on Two
Virgins] which came out later. I'd love to see those pictures now.
(Taken from: The
Strange Tale Of Iggy The Eskimo Pt. 2)
Nowadays it is not that certain any more if these shots were taken by
Storm Thorgerson or by Mick Rock. There might even have been a third
photographer at play. It seems that the flat of Syd Barrett was crowded
with people that day and that they all brought a camera. Unfortunately
the naughty Syd & Iggy pictures seem to have disappeared...
Maybe it was because there was too much frontal. Poor Syd, I remember
getting carried away, pulling and pushing him about, getting astride
him. He was in fits of laughter....which of course is not what they [the
photographers] where after. (Iggy Rose, 30 May 2011.)
Riding the Octopus
Allan Jones is of course not a Barrett anorak like yours truly (and most
of the readers of this blog) and thus he has to confide upon other
anoraky people. So he probably doesn't see any harm in the following
quote:
Rob Chapman's close reading of the remarkable 'Octopus', for example,
revealed the craft of which Syd was still capable. The song's cleverly
accumulated lyrics drew on diverse literary sources, folklore, nursery
rhymes, and the hallucinatory vernacular of dream states to create a
wholly realised, enraptured universe, halcyon and unique. (p. 35)
This is all true and very beautifully written, but only – and this
brings us back to the starting point of this article – it was Paul
Belbin's essay (compiled with the help of a dozen of contributors) that
revealed the Octopus' hidden lyrics to begin with and that roughly five
years before Chapman's Irregular Head biography. No wonder that Julian
Palacios, a Syd Barrett biographer in his own right, calls it the
Rosetta stone for decoding the writing inspirations for one of Syd
Barrett's most beloved songs.
But all in all Uncut's 'The Ultimate Music Guide' to Pink Floyd seems to
be an essential (and rather cheap, only £5.99) overview of the band and
its records and I like all the articles that I've read so far. I think
it's a gem and a keeper.
The Church wishes to thank: Paul Belbin, Mark Blake, Julian Palacios and
the wandering anonymous Pink Floyd lover from the Embassy of God.
Top picture: variation on a theme from The
Kitten Covers. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above) Belbin,
Paul: Untangling the Octopus v2, 2006. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Belbin, Paul &
Palacios, Julian: Untangling the Octopus v3, 2009. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Update
April 2015: same article hosted at Late
Night. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books,
London, 2001, p. 126-138.
Let me start this review with a quote at the end of 'Anthropologie du
Rock Psychédelique Anglais', a title that is so universal that
I don't have to translate it into English, unless for some Americans, I
guess. Alain
Pire quotes Simon
Frith who wrote in 1978:
The rock audience is not a passive mass, consuming records like
cornflakes, but an active community, making music into a symbol of
solidarity and an inspiration for action.
Obviously this quote should be branded on the bodies of record company
executives all over the world, especially those that gave us the music
of Britney Spears and other singing cattle, and who think that pop music
is something repetitive, uninspired and slick (but alas not Slick as in Surrealistic
Pillow). But this post seems to be turning psychedelic before it has
even started, so I'll wait a bit until that sugar cube wears off a bit.
Anthropology of English Psychedelic Rock
Alain Pire is a Belgian musician whom I may have caught about 30 years
ago when he was a member of the Jo
Lemaire & Flouze band, although he won't probably remember that
gig in the Stella Artois Feestzaal in Louvain anymore. Neither do
I, by the way, I only have a slight recollection that I may have watched
that band through a beer enhanced haze.
It was Jenny
Spires who pointed me to him, noting that I would perhaps be
interested in his (French) study of English psychedelic rock. It is
weird that a member of the Sixties underground Cambridge mafia, a term
coined by David Gilmour if my memory is correct, had to point me to a
book written by a compatriot. The gap between the Belgian French and
Dutch community is so deep and our internal relations are so troubled
that we don't know any more what the other community is up to, even on a
cultural level.
In the Sixties we would have called this divine intervention but I thank
social networking services for bringing this study into my attention.
Anthropology of English Psychedelic Rock is based upon Alain
Pire's doctoral
dissertation for the University of Liège in 2009, counts roughly 800
pages and is divided into 4 parts:
English psychedelic music Analysis of British psychedelic songs British
counter-culture Psychedelic drugs
English psychedelic music
Paradoxically the subject of the book is its biggest weakness. Defining
psychedelic music is like describing a butterfly's flight. We all know
instinctively how psychedelic music sounds, but it is nearly impossible
to write down its genetic formula on a piece of paper.
It is extremely complex to give a definition of a musical genre that is
so protean as psychedelic rock. (p. 92)
Basically Alain Pire, or Dr. Alain Pire for you, doesn't get any further
than stating that psychedelic music is music that simulates or evokes
psychedelic sensations. It's a bit like saying that the girl at the left
is nude because she has no clothes on.
As vague as the above definition is, psychedelic music does have some
common points. It uses technical novelties that had only recently been
introduced in the record studios and that in some cases were invented on
the spot by sound engineers at the demand of the musicians.
Phasing / Flanging
One of these psychedelic sound effects is the so-called phasing (or flanging)
that was already invented in 1941 by Les
Paul but was largely ignored for nearly 25 years until it reappeared
briefly on Lucy
in the Sky with Diamonds. The first 'full' utilisation of this
effect can be witnessed on the Small
Faces' Itchycoo
Park (1967).
Backmasking / Musique Concrète
Another psychedelic brand mark is the reverse
tape effect or backmasking.
The legend goes that John Lennon, under the influence of cannabis,
'invented' the effect by listening to a tape that had not be rewound,
but sound modifications and (reverse) tape loops had already been used
in avant-garde
music circles since the early fifties. Those same avant-garde
musicians had also experimented with musique
concrète, using acousmatic
sound as a compositional resource, and with tape speed effects but,
once again, these techniques were made popular by psychedelic rock bands
in the Sixties, notably The
Beatles who seemed to be one step ahead of all the others.
Indian instruments
It is due to George Harrison that Indian instruments invaded psychedelia
as well, first used in Norwegian
Wood and later picked up and copied by The Rolling Stones, Traffic,
Pretty Things, Donovan and others. I won't give the other characteristic
instruments of psychedelic music here, otherwise there would be no
reason to buy the book, but I'll gladly make an exception for the
psychedelic instrumental gimmick par excellence: the mellotron.
Mellotron
The basics of this instrument was already around since the late forties,
but once again, and I'm starting to sound like a stuck vinyl record
here, it was re-discovered by English psychedelia. Graham
Bond may have been the first to record it on Baby
Can It Be True (1965), but its full potential was used by The
Beatles and The
Moody Blues who made it their signature instrument. For a while it
was even nicknamed a Pindertron,
after the keyboards player of that band.
Music Analysis
It took me a couple of months to finish Anthropology of English
Psychedelic Rock and that is due to the second part where the author
analyses 109 psychedelic songs. I had the chance to listen to the songs
on my iPod while reading the book and that is of course the ideal way to
benefit of the detailed descriptions.
Starting with Shapes
of Things (Yardbirds,
1965) and ending with Cream's
I'm so glad (1969) it describes the four heyday years of
psychedelia. Influental bands and their albums get extra attention and a
short biography: The Beatles (obviously), but also The Rolling Stones,
Jimi Hendrix, The Pretty Things, The Soft Machine and Syd Barrett's Pink
Floyd.
It struck me, quite pleasantly, that Pire quotes Julian Palacios' Lost
In The Woods on page 251, intriguingly not in the Pink Floyd,
but in the Sergeant Pepper section, an album that – according to both
Pire and Palacios - started the end of the psychedelic era.
This strange psychedelic movement, blossoming quickly in an explosive
flash of colour, already seemed to be withering slightly. Its momentum
was to be felt everywhere in the world, but the original Big Bang, so to
speak, was nearing an end.
Of course Pire can't write detailed biographies about every band, that
isn't the purpose of his work, but the anoraky nitpicker in me came
across some mistakes that could have been weeded out by a better editor
or proofreader. Some examples:
The influence of science fiction stories will be found later in the
lyrics of 'Interstellar overdrive' or 'Astronomy Domine'. (p. 289)
I agree with Astronomy, but I have some difficulties believing that the
lyrics of Interstellar Overdrive find their origins in a science fiction
story as it is... an instrumental. Alain Pire knows bloody well that the
track contains no lyrics as he gets quite lyrical about the piece later
on:
This track is more than a piece of music: it is the testimony of an era,
a musical spokesman for a generation. When the band was in a good shape
its open structure symbolised, on its own merits, the term Psychedelic
Music. (p. 369)
Another mistake that slipped through is this one:
Duggie Fields, painter and friend of Syd Barrett at that time, still
lives at 101 Cromwell Road (p. 293).
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit has dedicated enough space to Syd's
(and Duggie's) apartment, located at Wetherby Mansions, Earls Court
Square. Of course Duggie lived at 101 Cromwell Road before and that is
probably were the error comes from.
During the year 1968, Barrett recorded his first solo album: The Madcap
Laughs, with the help from David Gilmour and Waters... (p. 340)
Also this is only part of the truth, Syd Barrett recorded some demos in
1968, but the sessions were abandoned after Peter Jenner agreed they
were 'chaos'. In April 1969, perhaps thanks to the the good influence of
Iggy, Syd found himself fit enough to start with the real recordings for
his first album.
But like I said, nitpicking is unfortunately enough the Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit's core business and the few mistakes certainly don't take
away the merits of this study. (But I would have a stiff talk with
Gérard Nguyen 'secrétariat de rédaction et mise en page'
if I were you, Alain, there are still too many printing errors in this
release.)
Alain Pire doesn't only describe the psychedelic big shots but also
dedicates some space to bands like Tintern
Abbey, who only issued one single in their entire career or the
almost forgotten band Blossom
Toes. Butterfly flights indeed.
Echoes
Throughout the book Alain Pire has the funny habit of first fully
explaining a quote that he has found in an extensive bibliography or
from interviews taken by himself, then followed by the quote itself and
thus merely repeating the previous.
I can understand that a doctoral thesis must be large and that some
professors at the University of Liège may be a bit slow to understand
but printed in a book this makes you feel like you are standing on top
of echo mountain. (Of course it could be that he uses this gimmick as
the written equivalent of the psychedelic tape loop trick.)
Even then, by deleting these double entries Alain Pire could at least
have saved 20 pages, handy for an index that is now missing.
It must be a second millennium thing that scholars don't put indexes any
more in their books. Alain Pire's study literally cites hundreds of
people, but the reader is unable to find these back once you have closed
the book. That's a pity. Especially as I like to borrow these things
myself for my various web doodles. Perhaps it is another way of saying,
look it up yourself, buddy.
Update 2020: nowadays this study can be bought as an e-book on
Kobo and Kindle, probably these editions can be indexed and searched.
(I suddenly realise that if I ever publish a Pink Floyd inspired book
the people that I have duly pissed of in my blog reviews will jump on my
back as a horde of hungry dogs.)
Counter Culture
The third part of the study, a description of the London Counter
Culture, is a book in its own right.
Of course there isn't much new you can tell about the underground. Jonathon
Green wrote perhaps the ultimate counter culture bible with Days
In The Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961-71 and its
alter ego All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture and
recently Barry
Miles has added a sequel to his In the Sixties book, London
Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945.
But Alain Pire puts down some cleverly made points here and there, such
as the following remark about the decline of the traditional British
values in the Sixties:
Family, religion, marriage, faithfulness get beaten in the face and
other values like sexual liberation, hedonism and alternative
spiritualism emerge. These new values embrace individualism like the
growing importance of one's appearance, but also, and paradoxically, new
forms of group participation like the ritual passing of a joint, the
sharing of sexual partners and living in communes. (p. 538)
Of course the Sixties counter culture could only thrive under the
favourable economical and cultural circumstances of that period.
Counter culture can only live a parasitic life, meaning that it carries,
right from its start, the seeds of its own failure. (p. 563)
Basically the classless society of Swinging London was a (very small)
mixture of (rock) stars, young aristocrats and middle class youth who
had the financial means (or their parent's support) to live outside the
square world.
Psychedelic drugs
One of the many instruments that helped creating psychedelic music was a
wonder drug called LSD.
Alain Pire tries hard to give an unbiased, albeit slightly favourable,
opinion about the drug that was, almost from one day till the other,
reviled by the American and British governments.
LSD has been tested as a medicine or therapy by several scientific
investigators but these experiments had to be stopped, despite the fact
that most clinical test gave positive results, especially with proper
professional accompaniment.
Of course LSD also had its negative sides, even more when people started
to use it as a leisure drug, Pire notes about Barrett:
If LSD helped Syd in the beginning to reveal his genius as a composer,
it became a real brake for his creativity and progressively sucked away
his writing potential. (p. 324)
Not that the dangers of LSD were not known. Michael Hollingshead, one of
the early LSD researchers, accidentally administered himself a massive
dose of the drug. After that event he got the constant impression of
living in a no man's land, partially in reality and partially in the
twilight world and at one point he asked Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary
for help.
While LSD seems to be the ideal method to open certain doors of
perception it can turn into a living nightmare if these doors refuse to
shut again, leaving its victim behind like a character from an Arthur
Machen story. I may not think if this is what really happened to Syd
Barrett.
Conclusion
The psychedelic era and its music is still greatly remembered and loved.
It mainly arrived because several puzzle pieces, randomly thrown in the
air, landed in such a way that they formed a nice picture.
Alain Pire divides these puzzle pieces into two parts: the pedestal and
the components.
The pedestal of the psychedelic era was a thriving economic situation
and a socio-cultural context that was open for change. George Harrison
called the Sixties a period of 'mini renaissance'. Alain Pire rightfully
mentions the art schools that were a pool of inspiration and experiment.
The list of those who attended art school is long: Chris Dreja, Dick
Taylor, Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton, Iggy Rose, Jimmy Page, John Lennon,
John Whitney, Keith Relf, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Phil May, Ray
Davies, Robert Wyatt, Roger Chapman, Roy Wood and Syd Barrett.
Three extra components were the psychedelic icing on the cake: First:
extremely talented musicians suddenly came out in the open; Second:
psychedelic drugs opened doors of (musical) imagination and experiment; Third:
technical wizardry made it possible to find new ways to deal with sound.
But all this couldn't have happened without the support of a fifth
pillar: the public. Without a public open for change and experiment the
psychedelic movement would have stayed a small avant-garde movement
unknown to the outside world.
Let me end with a quote taken from the introduction by Barry Miles:
Anthropology of English Psychedelic Rock is the most complete history of
that period's music that I have ever read. The author has to be
complimented for his erudition and I heartily recommend his book to
anybody who wants a profound explication of what really happened during
the Swinging Sixties. (p. 9)
I couldn't say it better. Anthropologie du Rock Psychédelique Anglais
is a damn well read and urgently needs to be translated into English.
Pire Alain, Anthropologie du Rock Psychédelique Anglais, Camion
Blanc, Rosières en Haye, 2011. 815 pages, foreword by Barry Miles. 38
Euros. (Link)
The Church wishes to thank: Alain Pire, Jenny Spires.
Obviously Felix Atagong returned the next afternoon to that safe heaven
that is The Anchor
for his alcoholic needs. "I am still pissed off at you, Alex
Fagoting", he snarled, "for throwing me out last night." "Here's
a Guinness on the house.", I lied, pretending I would not note it down
on his bill. "Simply get pissed instead." He laughed and as if nothing
had happened he just continued his story after his first gulp of the day.
Rule #1: a good barkeeper always listens to his customer, but in this
case I was humming along while Al
Stewart crooned on the background.
"There is this big ambiguity about the Floyd.", Felix started, "In the
early seventies they were aspiring leftist rock stars, playing the
French communist (and frankly Stalinist) party parties. But at the same
time there are these legendary stories about their royalties' catfights.
Waters always nagging and later getting 50 percent for his sixth grade
pubertal poetry alone and even then whining about his part for the
composition as well. In the theoretical (and highly improbable) case
that all four members would get even shares this benefited Waters with
62 and a half percent with the others only earning 12 and a half percent
each. Not bad for a rock star who bragged in the press about his social
housing projects."
"In reality poor Mason only got the crumpets and even these were later
regretted by the so-called socialist activist who Roger pretended he
was. One could paraphrase George
Orwell here: 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal
than others.' Waters would later beg, borrow or steal Orwell's socialist
allegory for the Animals album, not realising the ironic fact
that by then he had become the upper-pig of the band."
"We all know the story how Clare
Torry was only paid 30£ for her contribution on The
Great Gig In The Sky, something that would give her headaches
for years to come. And Alan
Parsons was only getting his EMI salary for his tremendous work on (The)
Dark Side Of The Moon, much to his dismay. Even after Pink Floyd
had become a financial dinosaur, with an annual turnover that would make
some African countries jealous, they were too greedy to give a free copy
of the album to the kids singing on Another
Brick In The Wall, until the press got hold of it."
"Excusez-moi, Felix.", I said, "But I see some pretty girls
who want my attention." On Wednesday afternoon the Barrett Ladies Club
meets at The Anchor. First they squabble about the pancakes they are
going to order and will argue over the fact that they (the pancakes, not
the women... yet) have not been sufficiently soaked in Grand
Marnier. After a while the grannies start discussing about the exact
type of colour Syd Barrett's floor boards were painted in, a somewhat
pointless discussion if you ask me, as in 42 years of time they still
haven't reached a consensus. You can only join the Barrett Ladies Club
if you know what special birthmark Syd Barrett had and on what buttock
it could be found, leaving out all the groovy chicks who had just been
passing by for some quick plating...
After the ladies had been supplied with the food and drink (coffee and a
thimbleful of eggnog) I returned to the bar where Felix had been
contemplating his miserable life in silence. With a little luck he would
have continued his inner monologue and not take off from where I had
left him.
"Since Nick Mason admitted he was officially in the recycling business I
have the utmost respect for him.", Atagong orated. "Even when he tries
to sell miniature cars with his signature on. I love his no-nonsense
style. While David 'the sound' and Roger 'the genius' are continually
trying to convince the public that they and they alone are Pink Floyd
Nick gets in 'with a wit drier than an AA clinic' (to quote novelist Kathy
Lette). But although Gilmour and Waters are like fire and water...
they sound unexpectedly in perfect unison when it comes to grab into the
fan's pockets. I suppose that Gilmour is a bit short of cash now that
his stepson has been sentenced to pick up the leftover soap in a British
prison. And Waters has just married again for the fourth time and Viagra
comes expensive nowadays."
I gave a wry smile but Felix couldn't be stopped.
"Even 37 years after the facts Waters and Gilmour try to be politically
correct and claim they gave the 1974 Gini-money
to charity, but Mason just adds: 'We shelved the cash, point.' Mason
also agrees that this is probably the last time in history that they
will be able to sell hardware to the fans (meaning CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray
disks) rather than downloadable bits and bytes. And by selling these
ridiculously expensive collector's boxes record companies and artists
have found a new way of income. Pink Floyd could've taken an example to
Elvis Costello who openly asks his fans not
to buy his latest record at such a ridiculous price..."
"What's the problem then with these Immersion boxes", I asked, "apart
from the price?"
"They are a fucking disgrace!", shouted Atagong, so loud that one of the
Barrett Gang Bang girls nearly choked on a profiterole.
"Let's start with Dark Side Of The Moon, shall we? How many CD-reissues
of that album have we already had? Who knows? Four, five? And all of
them have been remastered. Are we talking here about one of the best
rock albums of all times or does EMI considers Dark Side Of The Moon a
new brand of washing powder? An ameliorated version every few years to
keep on washing their dirty laundry whiter than white? Does it mean that
the earlier versions were all rubbish if the Floyd annex EMI feel the
need to keep on going remastering them? On top of that the 6 disks in
the Moon-box are highly repetitive...."
"That is quite obvious.", I retaliated, "It's all about the Dark Side,
isn't it?" Felix pointed his finger at a few millimetres from my nose. "Don't
try to be a smart-ass, lad.", he threatened. "That is not what I mean."
He looked for and unfortunately found a paper inside his jacket. "I have
it all written down for you.", he sycophantically whispered.
Pigs - three different ones
"The Dark Side Of The Moon Immersion set has a DVD and a Blu-ray with
multi-channel audio mixes of the album. The 1973 quad mix can be found
in 448 kbps, 640 kbps and a 96kHZ/24bit version. If you ask me that is
three times the same goody good bullshit. Also the 5.1 surround mix is
three times in the box. The Wish You Were Here Immersion set has one
disk less than the Dark Side box but EMI still found it necessary to
keep going on with their continuous repetition: also here the quad and
5.1 mixes have been inserted three times. But that is not all. For a set
that costs the fan an arm and a leg they have been scandalously
designed, packed and transported."
The Great Rock'N Roll Swindle
"Several buyers noticed that their disks contained fingerprints although
the boxes arrived sealed. I don't give a fuck if EMI uses Korean
child-slaves to pack these items but for 120 Euro a piece I would like
them to have fat-free fingers. My Immersion boxes arrived with the disks
at the bottom dislodged and with scratches that must have arrived
somewhere during transport."
"The novelty extras are quite tacky. A separate envelope with a
facsimile of a Pink Floyd gig entrance card is something you might pay
50 cents for, but not a lot more. And what to think of the marbles, the
scarf and the carton toasters in each box... it feels cheap but alas
your wallet reveals it isn't."
"I would like to know who is the EMI fuckwit who decided to package the
Dark Side Of The Moon marbles separately in bubble-wrap, but agreed to
have the disks attached in such a flimsy way that at the lightest shock
they start to travel on their own. Did you understand the music, EMI, or
was it all in vain? I know of one customer who had the guts to have 6
Immersion boxes opened in the store before he found one with undamaged
disks!"
We're only in it for the money
"And it isn't finished yet. The encrypted Blu-ray disks refuse to play
on most PCs. There seems to be a valid technical reason for that, driver
issues and so on, but in my opinion EMI deliberately issued a disk that
can only be played on stand-alone players, attached to a TV-set. If
other companies can manufacture Blu-rays that play faultless on a PC,
why not EMI?"
"On top of that the Wish You Were Here Blu-ray, in most European boxes,
has several audible glitches in the 5.1 Surround Mix at the end of Shine
On You Crazy Diamond and on other tracks as well. At 120 Euro a box
these sets are clearly a rip-off, but even at that price EMI fails to
provide us with unscratched and undamaged disks. The only question that
one can ask is indeed: Why
Pink Floyd? Why EMI? For fuck sake, why?"
Lucky for me at that moment one of the Barrett ladies started strangling
another one so I had an excuse to leave Felix behind in his misanthropic
misery.
Dark Side of The Moon fantasy (top picture), based upon a desktop image
from an unknown fan.
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
What a wonderful decade the sixties were. A small group of students at
both sides of the Atlantic changed the world forever, by making weird
music, weird posters and even weirder sex, and since then we live in
continuous paradise. Of course this is utterly bollocks but for the bulk
of I Remember the Sixties-books this is the general atmosphere
they exhale. For the business hippies, who have made successful careers
out of the sixties by rehashing pink coloured memories in their coffee
table books, the legend has become reality, but they are probably just a
minority. The sixties had a silent majority, in- and outside the
Underground, that will never be heard.
In 1988 Jonathon
Green compiled an oral history of the sixties titled: Days In
The Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961-71. In it a
constellation of Underground self-proclaimed heroes repeated the
clockwork adagio that the sixties were fantastic, but this book was the
first, for me at least, that contained some less triumphant testimonies
as well. Nicola Lane, who by her own account 'did little other than sit
in a corner, roll joints and nod when required' had a stab at the sexual
morals of the period in general. Susan Crane (better known as Sue
Miles) confirmed that the Beat movement was very sexist towards
women, invariably called chicks, and when her husband Barry
Miles had those very important International
Times meetings her job was 'to make the tea and the sandwiches' and
to leave the room 'whenever they were going to actually take decisions'.
Which she did.
Another International Times-founder Jim
Haynes, by definition a messiah of the Underground, was described by
Cheryll Park, then a 19-year old coming from the North of England, as a
sexual pervert who wanted her to end up in his bed with six other women.
“I'd love to meet Haynes again, now that he's a shrivelled-up old man,
and humiliate him in the way he humiliated me.”, she snapped. Be it Jim
Haynes, Julian Assange or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, some men will never
ever change.
In The Sixties Unplugged, Gerard
De Groot repeats the above testimonies of Nicola Lane, Sue Miles and
Cheryll Park. The book already appeared in 2008, but I was unaware of it
until now. A few copies ended up in the sales bin of a local bookshop
and that is how I got hold of it. I hesitated first as the book, at
first glance, seemed to be a mere recollection of the counter-culture in
America, but browsing through the contents I saw that the author also
had things to add about Biafra, China, Congo, France, Germany,
Great-Britain, Holland, Indonesia, Vietnam and even our closest
extra-terrestrial neighbour, the Moon.
Ronnie takes a trip
The Sixties Unplugged is a decade's compendium in 67 short essays and
rather than repeating what good things came out of it, it attempts to
describe where we went wrong. The book is sceptical, ironical and
cynical but also utterly readable, vivid and funny at places. What could
have been lying on your stomach as a gloomy brick becomes the proverbial
box of chocolates, especially thanks to the many unexpected anecdotes
that lighten it up. De Groot constantly dips his pen in a vitriolic
inkpot (does anybody in the 21st century understand this?) and like a
pigeon flying over an open air statue exhibition he has plenty of choice
where to launch his droppings.
I do have the impression that De Groot has more fun in ridiculing the
liberal caste than the conservative one, but I could be wrong as we have
been taught that the sixties were generally progressive anyway. It is
true that lots of noise was coming out of progressive circles... in
Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris or London... but De Groot also notes that 20
miles outside the city or university centres life went on its usual
conservative way. As a matter of fact, while the progressive thinkers
were believing that they were going to change the world by smoking pot
and listening to Hendrix guitar solos the conservative movement was
silently preparing its coup with repercussions that are still visible
today.
But some changes even the conservatives didn't see coming. A bit like Rick
Santorum now, a certain Ronald
Reagan was first laughed away by his fellow republicans and called
'a flagrant example of miscasting'. The man didn't know anything about
politics, they quipped and this was probably true, but that was
precisely Reagan's strength. He started his career by saying that he
wasn't a politician but a simple citizen who understood the needs of the
common Californian. While his opponents, republicans and democrats
alike, were sneering at him from their élite business
millionaire clubs, smoking expensive cigars and showing general disdain
for their voters, Reagan proved that the time was ripe for popular
conservatism, based on easy to digest one-liners (“One of the great
problems of economics is unemployment.”).
To get elected in 1966 Reagan needed to convince over a million of
democrat voters to cross over to his side and paradoxically enough one
of the issues that helped him to achieve that were... the hippies. Berkeley
had a history of tumultuous student uprisings (free
speech movement, Vietnam
war protest & People's
Park) that had infested other Californian universities as well.
Reagan only needed a one-liner to describe those radicals: “His hair was
cut like Tarzan, and he acted like Jane, and he smelled like Cheetah.”
Those beatniks at Berkeley University thought they were changing the
world, and they did indeed, but not as they intended. Ronald Reagan got
elected in California... This was the start of a brilliant political
career and may have been the pivotal point turning the world into an
arena of conservative capitalism...
There's a killer on the road
Did anybody notice dead bankers hanging on trees, lynched by an angry
mob lately? I don't think so. But we did see poor, unemployed and
homeless people, frozen to death this winter, because this crisis –
created out of greed – has hit them hard. Jean-Luc
Dehaene, ex-prime minister of Belgium and representative of the
Christian Labourers Union, will receive a tax-free bonus of 3.26 million
Euro (4.35 million dollars) this year. He is the man who led the Dexia
bank to its bankruptcy, well knowing that the Belgian government would
be obliged to intervene. The Belgian caution for the Dexia 'bad bank' is
15% of our BNP, so if the holding goes into liquidation, a scenario that
is not improbable, all Belgians will face a general tax increase and
cutbacks on all social programs...
Speaking about Belgium, my little country gets a mention in Gerard De
Groot's book as well. Congo,
once the sadistic playground of a Belgian king
who thought that cutting off hands was a pleasant pastime, got
independent in 1960. When its first democratically elected leader, Patrice
Lumumba, had the guts to insult the Belgian king on Congo's
independence day this was nothing less than an invitation to murder.
Not that the Belgians were playing solo, on a White House meeting in
August 1960 president Dwight
D. Eisenhower vaguely proposed to assassinate Lumumba and CIA
director Allen
Dulles, who described Lumumba as a mad dog who needed to be put
down, immediately gave orders to his secret agents to come up with a
cunning plan.
While the CIA was thinking of an all-american-superhero sophisticated
way to get a poisoned toothbrush over to Congo and hand it over to the
prime minister the Belgians had a much simpler idea. Under mild Belgian
pressure Lumumba was arrested, ceremonially and perpetually beaten and
tortured and finally shot through the head while four Belgian officials
were looking, mildly amused, from a few yards distance. Incidentally,
the prime minister of Belgium who was aware of this all, Gaston
Eyskens, belonged to the same Christian party as Jean-Luc Dehaene
now, but this is of course just a silly coincidence.
Although Gerard De Groot obviously agrees that this was an act of
'cynical criminality' he refuses to believe in the Lumumba myth, that is
as big in Africa now as the Che
Guevara-myth in the sixties. De Groot quips Lumumba would have been
assassinated anyway and if not, he dryly adds, the Prime Minister would
probably have grown into a typical African corrupt dictator just like
his spiritual heroes Nkrumah, Nyerere or Kenyatta.
Love, peace & happiness
And these are just two of the 67 essays in this book. The general rule
is that De Groot shows almost no respect for anybody (with some notable
exceptions here and there) although there is of course not always reason
for respect in his stories.
Biafra had an outburst of ethnic and political violence from 1966
to 1970 causing one to two million deaths, most of starvation. This
happened while the 'civilised' world was dutifully monitoring the
situation and organising UN congresses.
China had a few uprisings in the mid sixties. In 1968 communist
government troops killed 200 thousand rebels in the Guanxi province,
although the term rebel could mean women, children, babies or someone
wearing glasses or the wrong clothes. One of the weirder, perhaps tribe
related, rituals in Guanxi was to eat the enemy and over 3000
cannibalistic acts in the name of communism have been documented. Called
an orgy of violence by Gerard De Groot the Cultural Revolution would
make 2.8 million victims, although these numbers greatly vary from
source to source. The amount of people persecuted, imprisoned, beaten,
tortured or raped out of love for the Great
Helmsman is estimated to at least a tenfold of the previous number.
That not all political violence had a communist signature was proven in Indonesia.
In September 1965 and the months to follow between 500 thousand and one
million 'communist' sympathisers were killed in Indonesia, with just a
little help of the intelligence services of Great Britain and the USA. Joseph
Lazarsky, deputy station CIA chief in Jakarta, revealed that the CIA
had made a top 5000 hit-list to help the government troops. The list was
crossed off as enemies were liquidated and as an extra bonus president
Suharto received lucrative contracts with American Express, British
American Tobacco, British Leyland, General Motors, Goodyear, ICI,
Siemens and US Steel...
The shameful lesson of this book is that in 30 or 40 years time,
absolutely nothing has changed in this world, except perhaps for the
fact that in Syria people now have smartphones and can put music in
their ears to stop hearing the falling bombs.
Parallel lines
One review
of the book I found on the net says that Sixties Unplugged often follows
very familiar lines.
Although he claims that his work is 'more global than any book
previously produced', it is dominated by American characters and events,
most of which have been written about dozens of times before. His
selection policy is nothing if not orthodox, so his opening sections
cover such well-worn topics as the origins of the transistor, the
invention of the Pill and the poetry of the Beats. Later, we read about
the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the expansion of the Vietnam
War, the development of the hippy movement and the Civil Rights marches.
The supporting cast is the usual mixture of hairy protesters and senior
politicians, above all Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
There is some truth in that, and when Gerard De Groot hits the ground I
am a bit familiar with, namely the British psychedelic scene, all he can
come up with are testimonies from a book that appeared twenty years ago.
Sometimes he even tries too hard to make a point. I don't think that
using British Underground quotes to add value to an American situation
is really deontological. And there is a certain shock-jock aspect
present as well, as the chapter 'Summer Of Rape', amongst others, shows:
Rape was popular in the Summer of love. Rape was easy because there were
so many naïve young girls separated from parental protection.
or, quoting some juicy sixties newspaper article...
A young long-haired girl stripped and danced in the warm rain... (…) Her
friends stood by while a dozen young men raped her in an animal frenzy.
But it needs to be said that the sensational stories and its many
anecdotes make this book a real page-turner. Gerard De Groot likes to
divulge that every important man has his smaller side. Martin
Luther King, for instance, not only had a dream but also a busload
of extramarital affairs and probably that is one of the few things he
had in common with JFK.
If sex oozes from the pages, it is because the sixties had a sexual
revolution and revolutions not only tend to liberate but often lead to
an aftermath of violence as well. One hippie leader literally said that
women needed breaking like a horse before entering his commune (I wonder
how he could get any female followers) and the average discours
érotique of the Black
Panthers Party then wasn't really different from gangsta-rap today.
The Hole in the Ozone Layer
There aren't a lot of women in the book, and when there are they don't
always like to be reminded of the sixties. Bernardine
Dohrn's 1969 eulogy to Charles
Manson, for instance, can't be found on her CV at the Northwestern
University School of Law and neither is the fact that she once was
one of the most wanted terrorists of the United States. But of course
that is nothing to be proud of, The
Weathermen only succeeded in blowing their own members to pieces
rather than turning America into a communist republic.
In September 1967 hundreds of New
York Radical Women assembled before the Miss America contest in
Atlantic City. They massively removed their bras, much to the enjoyment
of the watching crowd, threw those in a dustbin and set the contents on
fire. Unfortunately, this is one of the sixties feminist myths that is
just that, a myth.
The truth was slightly different. About twenty protesters threw some
symbolic girlie stuff in a trashcan: girdles, bras, makeup, curlers,
mascara, shoes... and apparently they also crowned a sheep as Miss
America, but that was all that happened.
A reporter however called it bra-burning and from then on the legend
mushroomed until the point was reached that feminists really started to
believe in burning bras or protesting topless, a tradition that happily
lingers on till today,
but now you will call me a male chauvinist pig probably.
According to The Sixties Unplugged the decade ended in 1971 with the
obscenity trial of Oz. One of the questions was if a bawdy cartoon of
Rupert Bear (made by a fifteen years old) was obscene or not. The judges
decided it was but nobody really cared any more. The world had changed,
only the judges didn't know it yet.
Despite some flaws this is a very interesting book indeed. Even with 67
chapters and almost as many topics it gives you something to chew on and
makes you start thinking. Lucky we have Wikipedia nowadays, to further
dig into those subjects one really digs... but what did the sixties
bring into our world then, other than perpetual paradise... Gerard De
Groot:
The decade brought flowers, music, love and good times. It also brought
hatred, murder, greed, dangerous drugs, needless deaths, ethnic
cleansing, neocolonialist exploitation, soundbite politics,
sensationalism, a warped sense of equality, a bizarre notion of freedom,
the decline of liberalism, and the end of innocence.
Groovy man, really groovy...
Sources (other than the above internet links): De Groot,
Gerard: The Sixties Unplugged, Pan Macmillan, London, 2009. Green,
Jonathon: Days In The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 60, 119,
418-419, 448 (first edition: 1988).
Alien coaster, from The Dark Side of the Moon Immersion set.
Summer time has come and this means it is time to take the plastic
chairs and table into the garden and have an afternoon drink. The main
problem always is: where are the coasters to put the glasses on? Surely
you didn't pay 120 Euros for a Dark Side of the Moon Immersion
box set to ruin its cheap (but expensive) content by putting a glass of Mojito
on top of those exclusive carton collector's coasters, did you?
Thank god there is Mojo's Return
to the Dark Side of The Moon - Wish
You Were Here Again from a couple of months ago. I you have ever
listened to it then you certainly would wish you were over there,
praising that nobody can hear crap in a vacuum. My Wall Re-Built
albums are still shrink-wrapped and will probably stay like that until
eternity or till I finally have the nerve to make the final cut.
The Madcap
Laughs Again treatment from 2010 was slightly better, probably
because nobody tried to make too much of a fool out of the mad cat, but
nevertheless I only gave the album a 4 out of 10 score.
It does contain some interesting versions though, like Marc
Almond's Late
Night that has grown on me like a wart on a witches nose.
But for most of those covermount disks the only slightly ecological way
to give them a purpose in life is to recycle them as beverage coasters.
By the way, Mojo
should realize that these CDs can be counter-productive as well. A while
ago I saw the issue with Pet Sounds Revisited and because I
didn't want to spoil my good mood I simply turned my back, deciding not
to buy it. No way I was going to listen to the massacre of one of the
finest albums in the world.
This just to say I am slightly grumpy when it comes to these tribute
albums. But sometimes there are exceptions, like...
Men On The Border
Swedish Men
On The Border, so learns us the blurb, started as a project inspired
by the music and art of Roger Keith ”Syd” Barrett. The power duo
consists of Göran Nyström and Phil Etheridge and the result is Shine!,
a CD of interpretations of songs by Syd Barrett.
And what interpretations they are, rather than dumbfoundedly mimicking
Roger Keith they flavour their interpretations with power chords,
contemporary sounds, odd humour and slightly hidden musical references.
I have a soft spot for track number 5 that starts as a Joy Division,
Gary Numan or Blur inspired rendition of No Man's Land,
seamlessly sliding into Golden Hair and retreating to No Man's
Land again. The track is dark, a bit industrial with screaming guitars
and probably a signature track for what Men On The Border really stand
for. Göran Nyström:
(I'm) quite happy with it. As black as it should be. And yet with a
little golden shimmer deep inside.
The cool thing is that MOTB give an odd, unexpected, turn to the
classics we know so well. Wined And Dined makes you think that
the song will dive into Irish jig territory but the guitar that follows
(not that far from Gilmour’s Raise My Rent, if you ask me)
brings back happy memories from the music I liked in the seventies
(those heavenly oohs and aaahs), ending with a Beatlesque
streak. Göran Nyström:
I want to do this with great respect, yet not ending up imitating Syd
and his weaknesses at the time. I always felt uncomfortable with cover
artists trying to be the sick and poor Syd. I think his songs should
shine.
Listening to Gigolo Aunt, that I have always found a bit simple
as a song, it comes to me that some of the influences of MOTB lay in the
pub-rock from Graham Parker & The Rumour, Rockpile (with Nick Lowe &
Dave Edmunds) and the cruelly under-appreciated The Motors (their Airport
still is in my all times Top-20).
Opel, here renamed as Opal which is probably more correct,
has an intro reminding me of a hungry Jaws swimming towards some
EMI sales representatives who immediately devour the poor animal. First
its intro made me think of an Emerson, Lake and Palmer thing... but at
second thought some classic Deep Purple may be a bit closer to it.
Anyway it is classic stuff. The song has glimpses of an all female
string quartet, playing in the nude, but probably my imagination is
having a go at me now.
Long Gone starts – literally - with an interstellar joke before
jumping into Mark Bolan or David Bowie cockney territory , it's a
totally loony, but irresistible version (and it has a fine moog-a-like
outro as well).
What did I forget so far: Octopus, not as erratic as the
original and larded with slight psychedelic effects... Dark Globe,
loving the crack in Göran's voice at the 'wouldn't you miss me at all'
bit..., No Good Trying, a straight forward rocky rendition
with lots of reverb, oohs, aahs and nananananas... Feel, well
over seven minutes it starts with a slightly Floydian ambient intro and
it further meanders into a pastoral Grantchester Meadows classic
but at the four minutes mark a slightly brilliant Narrow Way
guitar solo takes over...
Late Night must be one of the most beautiful songs that Syd
Barrett ever wrote and Men On The Border also get this one right. Love,
peace and understanding are omnipresent (not only on this track, but on
the whole album) and, frankly, this is a quite moving version.
You may have deducted by now that the album is excellent and then we
haven't said a word about the art department yet, one of the extra
reasons you should buy this album for.
The cover art has been made by Kajsa-Tuva
Henriksson and the booklet illustrates every song with a painting
from Jennifer
D'Andrea's (aka JenniFire) I.N.Spired series. Buying the CD will
also financially help the Cambridge based Squeaky
Gate organisation.
Men On The Border haven't set up a web-shop for their album yet, but you
would be more than obliged to mail them at info@menontheborder.com
and ask for a copy.
And if the above review didn't convince you, you can listen and watch
their songs on the Men On The Border Sound
& Vision
pages (have a go at Feel
with more intriguing art work from JenniFire).
Those Swedish surely have something I can't explain.
Many thanks to: Göran Nyström, Phil Etheridge & JenniFire.
In 1967 Pink
Floyd suddenly had a hit with See
Emily Play and their name was all over the music press in England.
As such they were spotted across the ocean by the Canadian record
company Arc that specialised in so-called low-budget sound-alike
greatest hits albums.
Sound-Alike
Before we start making fun of the sound-alike phenomenon we would
like to point out that there was still a great musical rift between
America and Great Britain and that covers were often the only way for an
English audience to hear an American record, and vice versa. In 1965 the
proto-Pink Floyd combo Jokers
Wild, with David
Gilmour, tried to cash in on the Sam
& Dave classic You
Don’t Know Like I Know, but not fast enough as the original
hit the English market before Decca could issue the Jokers Wild version.
The rise and fall of David Gilmour's first band had been decided on by
bad timing and a stroke of bad luck.
Next to the 'cover' market, where local record companies tried to be the
first to issue their cover of an overseas hit, there was the
'sound-alike' market, with a slightly different sense of timing. Once a
hit record entered the charts, sound-alike singles were rapidly recorded
by session musicians and put in the stores to sell their rip-off
versions in the slipstream of the original hit.
While some of these sound-alike versions were deliberately made to
confuse the customer ('I Walk The Line' by 'Jonny Cass' comes to mind)
most of them ended on low-budget hit or party albums, EPs and singles.
Nobody would notice the difference anyway, especially on warm barbecue
days with lots of booze and a Dansette portable record player screeching
in the garden.
There is a thin line between sixties 'covers' and 'sound-alikes',
because the cover bands often did their best to sound as close to the
original as was humanly possible, while the sound-alike bands often did
their best to sound as close to the original as was humanly possible.
Sound-alike labels from different countries and continents traded tracks
and identical tracks would often appear under different band names.
Warning: if you are already confused by now, you will even get
more confused by what follows next, this will not be easy reading. Most
has been pinched from collector's blogs and newsgroups and we will do
our best to give credit to the original authors and websites.
Arc Records
One record collector describes Arc records as follows:
Arc Records was Canada's most notorious low-budget label, in the same
league as labels like Crown or Alshire in the States. They were famous
for taking famous pop songs by one artist and getting some schmo to
cover them and giving him a phoney name similar to that of the original
artist. (Listener
Klip at WMFU blog.)
A slightly more academic description of the label can be found on the
Canadian Encyclopedia (page no longer active):
Arc Records, subsidiary of Arc Sound Co Ltd, which was established in
Toronto in 1958 by Philip G. Anderson and William R. Gilliland. At first
a record distributor, Arc Sound began releasing recordings under its own
Arc label in 1959 and purchased the Precision Pressing Co in 1961. Arc
Records released a series of pop singles albums under the name "Hit
Parade" (1963-64). Arc Sound and its subsidiaries came under the control
of a Canadian-owned holding company, the Ahed Music Corp Ltd, Toronto,
in 1969 and ceased operations in 1986.
Arc Records in Canada were doing a lot of sound-alike records in the
sixties. They had the Hit Parade series and at least two of them
are carbon copies of Current Hits albums that appeared on the
American Hit
Records label.
Arc also apparently got tied in with Embassy
Records (Great Britain), the label of the English Woolworth
stores. It churned out top hits as well, usually with two different
artists on one 45. All of the Embassy recording was done by Oriole
Records, with mostly in-house musicians and groups. One of the cover
bands on Embassy were The Jaybirds who became famous after Alvin
Lee renamed the band to Ten
Years After.
Embassy quit the sound-alike business in the late sixties and Oriole was
bought by Columbia about the same time. Some of the Embassy/Oriole stuff
showed up on American Top Hits albums from Columbia
Record Club as well.
Arc Records had at least five LP's of Mersey Beat out in the mid
sixties. Some of those list the individual Embassy performers, but most
credit the group sounds to The Mersey Beats Of England. Unfortunately
there is only a partial list
of Arc releases available on the web. (Above text almost literally
copied from KenB/Rockin'
Bee.)
Three To One
In 1967 the Vancouver band Three To One issued a mono single
considered to be the very first cover of a Pink Floyd song: See
Emily Play / Give
My Love (Arc 1186, most pictures and sound-bits on the web are from
a 2008 collector's edition replica of that single, except - perhaps -
the picture underneath that could be an original.)
Let's switch over to Kiloh
Smith who describes this little gem in his weird enthusiast style...
Check out this rare Canadian psych 45 by Three To One - See Emily Play
b/w Give Me Love on the Arc Label. This one’s got two monster tracks
from Three To One, including what must to be the very 1st Pink Floyd
cover in history. You might’ve heard their creepy cover of See Emily
Play on a comp or two before - it’s pretty faithful to the original, at
least up until the second chorus, when a little girl suddenly pops her
head into the studio to ask “Everyone know how to play?” while someone
in the sound effects library drops in a bunch of outer space phaser
effects from the albino gorilla episode of the original Star Trek series.
This would have been an interesting titbit for all the Sydiots among us,
but there is more going on. Arc was a rather dodgy label to say the
least and also with this release they lived up to their expectancies.
See Emily Play was Three to One's only claim for fame. The Canadian
Pop Encyclopedia describes them as follows:
Three To One
John Renton, Derek Norris (bass), Brian
Russell (guitar), Claudette Skrypnyk
After leaving The Classics,
Brian Russell formed Three To One in Vancouver in 1966. The band soon
relocated to Yorkville in Toronto to try and catch a break. They soon
got signed to Arc Records for one single - a cover of Pink Floyd's See
Emily Play.
They also performed on CTV's 'After Four' TV show and
appeared on Yorkville's tie-in compilation album to the show. They would
later change their name to Raja before calling it quits.
After Four
The After
Four (dead link) TV-show compilation album was issued in 1968 on Yorkville,
a sub-label of Arc. It has covers from well-known tracks such as You
Keep Me Hangin’ On (Teak Wood, dead link) or Winchester
Cathedral (The Chain Rattlers Orchestra). Several things are wrongly
stated on its cover: Four
In The Morning (dead link) from The Scarlet Ribbon is
actually a track in disguise from a Canadian band called The Quiet
Jungle (more about them later), Changin'
Time (dead link) from Patrician-Anne
is a cover from Janis Ian's I'll Give You a Stone If You'll Throw It
(Changing Tymes) and the second track on the B-side is not I'm
A Bad Boy by Bob Francis, but See
Emily Play by Three To One. Nobody knows why there is a
different track listed on the sleeve notes than there is pressed on
vinyl. (Listen to the complete album on Grooveshark.)
So far so good, but here is where things get a bit more complicated. We
did warn you.
Flower Power
At about the same time, 1967-1968-ish, another Arc compilation album
sees the light of day, featuring the Okey Pokey Band & Singers.
The album with number A-735 is called Flower Power and has
sound-alike versions of several 1967 hits, including See
Emily Play. Here is what the liner notes have to say:
On this recording the zany, irrepressible Okey Pokey band & Singers
focus on Flower Power. Resultant is a boss album highlighting the best
sounds to blitz your transistor over the past months.
See Emily Play from Okey Pokey uses the same bed
track (or background music, if you like) as the Three To One version
but has different vocals. Some of the wacky sci-fi sound effects are
missing, but the good thing is the track is in magnificent stereo
hi-fidelity. The 'everyone
know how to play' sample at 1:29 has mysteriously disappeared from
this version as well.
In short: we have two versions of the same track, slightly remixed and
with different vocalists, as if this had been recorded in a karaoke bar.
The Okey Pokey Band & Singers
The Okey Pokey Band & Singers released two full albums but were
obviously a studio project. According to the liner notes the band and
singers: 'have played San Francisco, capital of the hippy world', 'have
blown their minds at Fillmore' and 'loved-in at Ashbury Heights', but
the credits show that the tracks were originally 'recorded in England'
and not in Canada.
This could make sense as we have already stated that low-budget record
companies from different continents used to trade tracks, just to keep
the costs low.
The Okey Pokey version has a certain British feel and when Arc got a
copy of the master tape they may have removed the British vocals,
replacing them with the Canadian singer of One To Three. Of course there
is always the possibility that the English tape only contained an
instrumental track and that both singing parts were recorded in Canada.
A lot of sound-alike songs do exist that share the same bed track, but
have different vocalists.
But Jenell Kesler (aka Streetmouse) at Discogs
just thinks the record is entirely Canadian:
They also claim that these recordings where prestigiously done in
England, when they were actually done in Canada on a low budget. There
is speculation that the ‘original’ instrumental tracks, the bedrock
tracks for these songs where purchased or lifted, with additional
effects and vocals being laid down on top of them to give the feel of
the real thing … though why [?]...
The Quiet Jungle
In 2007 Garage
Hangover suspected that members of The Quiet Jungle could
have been part of the deal.
Toronto based The Quiet Jungle started originally as The Secrets. The
band was signed by Arc Records and, next to releases in their own name,
some of them hit records, they were used as (anonymous) session
musicians on a Monkees sound-alike album and on a children's album
called The Story of Snoopy's Christmas. Vocalist Doug Rankine,
however, denies any involvement on the Okey Pokey Flower Power album:
We had nothing to do with the "Flower Power" album. There were a couple
of TV shows at that time called After Four and High Time that were on
CTV. We were on those shows verily often. There was an album produced at
the time called "After Four". (…) At the time of the album we recorded a
song entitled "Four In the Morning". Without going into a lot of detail,
we recorded it under the name of the Scarlet Ribbon.
John Smith
Anton from Freqazoidiac
adheres the theory that the Okey Pokey version, including its vocals, is
entirely British.
It has been rumoured that Manchester Cathedral by The Chain Rattlers
Orchestra (see the After Four album above) was in fact done by John
Smith. You Keep Me Hangin' On from Teak Wood on that same compilation is
definitely John Smith's work. He has acknowledged this himself on Garage
Hangover.
The only problem is that John Smith (that is his real name, by the way)
denies having ever recorded See Emily Play:
In answer to your first question "See Emily Play", I didn't record that
song. If my name and my band was used, this is new to me, but I don't
think there's much I can do about that is there!
The real John Smith left after the first album but the band
continued to record, with different lead-singers as John
Smith and the New Sound. None of their three official albums (and
singles) have See Emily Play. John Smith and the New Sound (and their
alter-ego band The Beat Kings) took a joyride on the wave of British and
Canadian pop, but they can't be linked to the Okey Pokey / Three To One
See Emily Play versions. This means we are back to square one.
Ben Cash & The Cash-Tons
Probably the John Smith rumour can be traced back to a typo on, where
else?, the Internet. In a comment on the Red
Telephone 66 (dead link) blog Jancy claims that John Smith and The
New Sound recorded See Emily Play for a German compilation (that
appeared in 1972).
And yes, might you wonder, this third 'German' cover version is exactly
the same as the Okey Pokey one. It could be interesting to compare the
Ben Cash & The Cash-Tons cover from My Generation with the Arc release
(if any) but this would bring us too far in this messy labyrinth.
David Byron
There is an unconfirmed rumour that Ben Cash was none other than David
Byron (real name: David Garrick) from Uriah
Heep fame. The (more than excellent) David Byron fansite
claims that the singer could be present on at least 140 low-budget
covers on Avenue Records. They have - so far - identified (and
re-issued) 40 tracks sung by Byron, but they don't include See Emily
Play on this list.
Multiple versions were recorded of many of the Avenue tracks and
sometimes included as many as five different lead vocalists. These
tracks were released on various vinyl records under titles such as Top
Six, Top Six From England, 12 Top Hits, England’s Top 12 Hits,
Chartbusters, Studio 33; and compilations such as Groovin’, The Rock
Star Parade, Super Soul Sounds and multiple other titles. David
participated on multiple releases under these names but its apparent
some of the releases listed false artist names but not the actual
participants. David sang under listings such as Dave’s Soul Group, The
Beat Kings and the rehashed name John Smith and The New Sound. Multiple
other names are known and they overlap by other artists as well but
again this can't be listed with accurate results. (Taken from Travellers
In Time.)
Update 21 07 2012: Ron Mann from David
Byron Net confirmed us that: "David Byron wasn’t part of that [See
Emily Play] session", but he doesn't know who the singer is. He was so
kind to lead us to some people who do know a lot more about these low
budget sessions, so fingers crossed and keep on checking the Church.
(February 2012: it needs to be said that we didn't find new information
about this release, but we still keep on searching.)
Amongst the other lead singers that have participated on the hundreds of
Avenue sound-alike recordings are: Reginald Dwight who was a bit more
successful later in his career as Elton
John, Tony
Steven, Peter Lee Stirling (aka Daniel
Boone) and Danny
Street.
John Smith (reprise)
The David Byron website continues
with the following information.
At one point there was a real John Smith and a real New Sound backing
band. In the 60s he signed a solo deal with Parlophone
and released singles under the name of Bobby Dean. Being managed by Bill
Wellings he ended up at EMI's Top Six label doing discount records
cover songs.
These recordings were released in the UK and Germany and had some
success. The Vogue record label released these songs under the original
band name but also as The Four Kings. By late 1967 John Smith himself
had lost interest in the group and moved on.
This left Bill Wellings with a band but no lead-singer but nevertheless
he decided to continue the band, without the consent or knowledge of the
real John Smith. As Wellings was deep in the discount records business
and was interchanging vocalists with Avenue Records at PYE Studios in
London he had several people to choose from.
Several tracks were done by the lead vocalist of The
Excheckers, Phil Blackman, but also David Byron did vocals on some
tracks for the two John Smith and the New Sound albums that followed.
The Golden Ring
But the confusion isn't over yet, because the See
Emily Play cover will appear once again under another name. So far
we are aware of four releases of this cover: 1. Three To One
(1967, Canadian single) 2. Three To One (1968, Canadian album,
same as 1) 3. Okey Pokey Band & Singers (1968, Canadian album,
same backing track, but other vocalist) 4. Ben Cash & The
Cash-Tons (1972, German album, same as 3)
All these versions take about 2 minutes and 50 seconds, but Cicodelico
came across a version on an Arc EP that is about a minute shorter: See
Emily Play. The EP in question (TS 10) has All You Need Is Love, See
Emily Play and With A Little Help From My Friends and is recorded by The
Golden Ring. It is just a shortened version of the Okey Pokey
original and probably this was done to fit on the seven-inch record with
the other songs.
The Golden Ring are another one of these tribute bands on Arc who issued
at least 22 albums, EPs and singles: A Man Without Love, A
Tribute To Johnny Cash, Love Me Tonight, The Little Drummer Boy, Tribute
To Glen Campbell and many others...
Epilogue
If the original See Emily Play sound-alike has been recorded in
England, with or without vocals, then the (Canadian) Three To One
version is not the first cover of a Pink Floyd song. Unfortunately, we
don't know where, when and by who this took place. Okey Pokey, The
Golden Ring and The Cash-Tons are all fictitious bands that never
existed as such. Three To One, however, did exist as a band and they
were probably glad to add their voices to an already existing bed track,
coming from the UK. It is pretty weird that nobody has located a British
release, but perhaps the Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett were already
considered too weird to fit in the low-budget marketing scheme.
(We have another article mentioning sound-alike records and artists,
regarding the lost Pink Floyd Early Morning Henry session that
apparently was a William Butler cover: Singing
A Song In The Morning.)
Links & Stuff
We apologise for this post that is probably the most confusing ever at
the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. We have tried contacting a few people
and as such there may still be updates to be published. And if someone
of you happen to know who really recorded the (probably English)
low-budget-version of See Emily Play, let us know!
The BBC describes its program Songs
of Praise as 'inspiring hymns and songs, together with uplifting
stories of faith from around the UK and beyond' This is what we
immediately thought of when church-member Rich
Hall from Illinois send us a copy of his song The Reverend.
In our humble opinion there is no other day better than Easter to listen
to this gem that perfectly describes the Church, its Reverend and our
prime object of adoration, Iggy Rose.
Here it is in splendid hi-res, hi-fi and 25 frames per second. As it is
a Flash presentation, it might not be visible on your portable phones
and other overpriced Apple stuff like that. A fast internet line is
recommended.
The Reverend (hi-res Flash version)
And as this is Easter and Songs of Praise we hereby give you the text,
so that you can all join in this magnificent hymn.
The Reverend
Oh, congregation Standing here before me I offer you this simple
sermon
You can trust in Iggy She's never led me wrong In Iggy we trust
Don't put your faith In medieval superstitions Believe in
something that matters
Release your inhibitions Sit back; let it envelope you Soon you'll
feel Iggy's love
Out in the snow The wind was starting to blow As the sun went down And
the fire began to glow
Have you ever looked for someone so long You have
to wonder if they even exist
Here in my igloo with Iggy the Eskimo Watching the
snow falling down
Devoted listeners Hanging on my every word I give you Iggy's love
No need to look we further We can stop the inquisitions Iggy's
message is love
Don't be afraid to let yourself go give in to Iggy's love
You'll feel it wrap around you It's all you'll need to keep you warm You're
no longer alone.
Have you ever looked for someone so long You have
to wonder if they even exist
Here in my igloo with Iggy the Eskimo Watching the
snow falling down
Have you ever looked for someone so long You start
to wonder if they even exist
Here in my igloo with Iggy the Eskimo Watching the
snow falling down
For those who haven't got a Flash-enabled webbrowser, let's try it
another way. Here is a, somewhat downgraded, version on Youtube. Even if
this was created using a 2.64 Gigabyte AVI file, it has some stuttering
and, unfortunately, the music came out not entirely synchronised with
the graphics. But don't let that spoil the fun.
Happy Easter!
Richard Michael John Hall is a self-publishing artist in the
'alternative' or 'indie rock' genre with about ten releases on his name.
It is rumoured that his next release will be a concept album about the
weird world of Barrett anoraks. Website: Richard
Michael John Hall BandCamp channel: RichMFHall SoundCloud
channel: RichMFHall YouTube
channel: RichFMHall
The Church wishes to thank: Amy Funstar, MAY, Brett Wilson for their
(un)willing cooperation in the making of the videoclip. Thanks to
Rich Hall and Joe Perry for making music. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
(This article contains a much concealed review of the Rich Hall album Birdie
Hop and the Sydiots, to immediately access it, click here.)
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit celebrates its fifth birthday.
An official statement by the Reverend:
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit is five years old. It has always taken
an independent road and has maintained an ironic and satirical view on
the Syd
Barrett phenomenon and its fans.
We will, however, never spit on the fans. We have embraced the term Sydiot
as our Geusenwort,
meaning that we have reappropriated this derogatory nickname as an
honorary title.
While we have the utmost respect for the casual Barrett fans, the cosmic
brides (persons [m/f] who claim to have a relationship with Syd of some
kind, often crossing spiritual boundaries) and the Sydiots, we
intuitively question the official Barrett
organisations, record companies and nincompoops who circle around Syd
like vultures. We will not automatically endorse their websites, their
records and their books... and this has not always been appreciated. It
seems that nothing has changed much since those days in 1967 when Norman
Smith was reprimanded by his boss:
EMI
were ignorant, lazy and paranoid. I'd once been carpeted by Sir
Joseph Lockwood, almost fired, told to stay away from courting Pink
Floyd. But I took no notice.
If Norman Smith had obeyed we would never have had The
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Taking no notice was, is, and will
always be the Holy Church's attitude, even if this puts us in the firing
line of some of the minor half-gods and makes us wonder if this Church
was just a waste of time. But:
This is my church This is where I heal my hurt It's a natural grace Of
watching young life shape It's in minor keys Solutions and remedies Enemies
becoming friends When bitterness ends This is my church (Faithless,
God
is a DJ, 1998)
All tomfoolery aside, we are proud to have put a thing or two on the
Floydian agenda in the past five years that would otherwise have stayed
unnoticed. If we may lead you to one paragraph on this blog, that we are
particularly fond of, it is this
one and we constantly try to live by those standards. So-called
social media make witnesses easy accessible nowadays but this doesn't
give the Sydiot nor the Reverend a wildcard to constantly harass them
with questions about how 'Syd really was'. Remember:
A granddaughter's smile today is of much more importance than the faint
remembrance of a dead rock star's smile from over 40 years ago. (Taken
from: We
are all made of stars.)
And for those who don't agree the Church can only bring solace by citing
the following words of that great Cantabrigian band:
So I open my door to my enemies And I ask could we wipe the slate
clean But they tell me to please go fuck myself You know you just
can't win (Pink Floyd, Lost For Words, 1994)
But this speech has been going on for too long, so...
Let's party!
It's a fucking birthday godammit! And we have exactly the right party
album for that... and you can have yours too!
Birdie Hop and the Sydiots
Richard
Michael John Hall is a self-publishing artist in the 'alternative'
or 'indie rock' genre with about a dozen releases on his name. In March
2013 he surprised the world with his songs The
Reverend and Uncle Alex and it came to the Church's ears that this
was going to be a part of a quintessential concept album. Written in
about a month's time the album has been released a couple of weeks ago.
Birdies and Barretts
Birdie Hop and the Sydiots is named after a rather decent Facebook
group and its members who range from the wacky to the insane now
that an old cricketer has left the crease. Its first song, Birdie Hop,
is a pastoral tune about this relatively calm oasis and how it is a
reference to all who have enclosed Syd Barrett in their hearts.
I've seen your mother (and she's beautiful) is a track about our
most cherished and most hated family member. Rich Hall perfectly catches
that ambiguity (see also John
Lennon & Roger
Waters) but apparently that is not what the song is about. Let's
just resume by saying that Barrett fans come in different colours and
sizes. Cosmic brides are fans, who declare their unconditional love for
Syd and sometimes meet him on a higher esoteric level. It is good that
what happens in the spirit world cannot be seen by the naked eye
although sometimes weird erotomanic
anecdotes drip through. Cosmic brides are usually harmless, although
they can be annoying when they start messaging people with important
directives from the other side.
With Cheesecake Joe, a catchy hard rock tune built around one of
Birdie Hop's most flamboyant members, the Birdie suite lifts off into
the higher stratosphere. Cheesecake is the deadhead equivalent of the
Floydian fan. He is the UFOnaut who still claims Pink Floyd is a stoner
band and that their main message is to turn on, tune in & drop out...
The Reverend is the first highlight of the album, what a psychedelicate
song, what a fine realistic description of this genius, what an
adoration for Iggy the Eskimo, what a magic looking glass. But even
after having heard this song for about 45 times I still don't know if
the song really isn't an insult packaged as a gift. But walking the thin
line between praise and mockery is what the Holy Church is all about.
Great song. It should be a hit. Really.
A high-res Flash clip of this song can be found here.
And for those who prefer a somewhat lighter YouTube version:
Just when you think that it can't get any better there is Uncle Alex,
an ear-worm of a song. Not wanting to go too far into details I can only
say that some of the apparently throw-away lines are far closer to the
truth than you possibly can imagine. Rich Hall is a poignant observer.
This should even be a bigger hit.
A videoclip for this song can be found on the Reverend's YouTube channel.
Solo en las Nubes could be the theme song for a Sergio
Leone spaghetti western with Antonio
Jesús as the vengeful balded bad-ass. On his own this man is
responsible for most of the Barrett admiration in the Spanish-speaking
world and thus he is, by definition, regarded as a potential danger by
the powers that be. Speak out his name in a certain provincial
university town, close by the river Cam, in East Anglia and gallows are
spontaneously risen again. This is a song that should be played around
camp-fires all over the world. This is an urban hymn.
Jenny and Libby makes me think of the Television Personalities
for one thing or another. Throughout the song Rich Hall name-drops
several Birdie Hop alumni and their doings. I wonder if the artist has
amazing powers of observation and if he knew, when he wrote the song in
spring 2013, that the refrain was predictive for the shape of things to
come.
Jenny and Libby ends, what I call, the birdies section of the album.
This is being followed by the madcap suite, a trilogy about the darker
side of Barrettism where the weirdness, the madness and the
obsessiveness turns into a Stephen
King nightmare...
Madcap Laughter & Hammerings
Fuggitaboutit, build around a fifties teenage tragedy song, is
based upon the endless laments of certain self-proclaimed Barrett
scholars.
Your Significant Other is a track about those weird trolls who
infests groups with different aliases, spreading false information and
starting discussions, sometimes among themselves, just for the sake of
argument. So what's your name today, which identity will you choose?, is
the question Rich Hall asks. Based upon a true story.
Yer List Monger. Call it this album's The
Trial but with a haunting Twin
Peakish atmosphere, a hot burning sun, a mad priest preaching on the
telly about sin and redemption, a fat red-neck orating conspiracy
theories at the end of the bar, suddenly spitting out the venomous
question: are you real Syd Barrett fans? Dwarfs are passing by,
walking backwards and speaking in tongues. Meet the Hannibal
Lecter of the Syd Barrett world.
A Cry From The Outside
Birdie Hop and the Sydiots has its coda with a rather alienated version
of Barrett's Feel
that leaves me with a bitter-sweet taste in the mouth. It's puzzling,
it's not nice. It's all dark, as a matter of fact.
At times Rich Hall's way of words makes me think of Jason
Lytle and Lee
Clayton, his music is a kaleidoscope of sounds that reminds my
fragile memory of T-Rex, neo-psych or garage rock. But of course Rich
Hall is at first Rich Hall and nobody else.
Throughout this article I have dispersed some quotes from Pink Floyd and
I did catch some resemblances here and there with themes from The Wall,
but that is probably because I've recently watched a Mr. Roger Waters
show. Let's hope this album will never grow into a monster and that a 69
years-old Rich Hall will not be obliged to lip-synch next to a 130
metres long plastic wall with hi-tech projections and a ridiculous
flying cactus balloon in the air.
You don't need to be a Birdie
Hop member to enjoy this album as all songs stand by themselves, but
if you grab this and listen to it why don't you let the birdies
know what you think of it.
Birdie Hop and the Sydiots July 2013 Instruments &
vocals by Rich Hall. Mixed by Rich Hall and Ron Bay. Mastered
by Ron Bay.
Thanks: Anonymous • Freqazoidiac • Solo En Las Nubes • Psych62 • Anni •
Bill • Euryale • Brooke • Jeff • Prydwyn • Chris • Helen • Sean •
JenniFire • Sadia • Herman • JenS • Vince666 • Nipote • Gretta • Viv •
Adenairways • Giuliano • Dolly • John • Babylemonade • Duggie •
Synofsound • Mark • Xpkfloyd • Rich • Brett • Krackers • Peter • Phil •
Zag • Warren • Listener • Bob • MOB • Nina • Dark Globe • Emily •
Retro68special • Natashaa' • Vic • Jenny • Neonknight • Lord Drainlid •
Ebronte • Simon • Ian • Will • Motoriksymphonia • NPF • Greeneyedbetsy •
Anton • Hallucalation • PF Chopper • Lee • Felixstrange • Michael •
PhiPhi • Eva • Cicodelico • Julian (Gian) • Denis • Dallasman •
Emmapeelfan • Paro नियत • Ewgeni • Matt • Kiloh • Elizabeth • Alexander
• Kirsty • Paul • Mohammed (Twink) • Nigel • Rusty • Braindamage •
Pascal • Mark • Stanislav • Anthony • I Spy In Cambridge • Mick • Alain
• Wrestling Heritage • Bloco do Pink Floyd • Moonwall • Rod • Charley •
Amy • Joe • Griselda • Eternal • Dominae • Russell • Beate • KenB •
Dan5482 • Tim • Antonio • Party of Clowns • Anne • Late Night • Lori •
Colleen • Brian • Christopher • Jose • Göran • Jancy • Banjer and Sax •
Ron • Vicky • ...and all those we have forgotten to mention!
Men On The Border are a Swenglish
duo (Göran Nyström & Phil Etheridge) who surprised the world around June
2012 with the release of their album Shine!
(exclamation point included). The album consisted entirely of Syd
Barrett covers that were, for a change, not meticulously cloned, but
recreated following the weird musical rules from their Nordic universe.
The album was (still is) a smasher, although that may not have resulted
in a million selling mega success. Of course that is entirely their
responsibility as they neglected to follow the Reverend's advice to make
a video clip where bikini-clad ladies would have logistic problems with melting
ice cream.
In an interview from this summer, originally published (in Spanish) on Sole
En Las Nubes, and hosted at the Church as well (Men
On The Border, Syd Swedish version, thanks Antonio!) they broke the
news that a new album, called Jumpstart would see the light of
day this year.
It made me wonder if MOTB would suffer from Second Album Syndrome,
also know as Sophomore
Slump in more academic circles, especially as the band would have no
recourse to the effervescing work of Syd Barrett this time. How will
their own work be received by the Barrett community, now that there is
no more Syd to rely on... Well let's find out, shall we?
Jumpstart
The album starts traditionally with the title track. An electric guitar
mimics a starting motor, I remember that trick from Todd
Rundgren's solo on Bad
Out of Hell, yes the Reverend is that old, and the song further
evolves into a pub rock tune that asks to be played very loud. As a
starter it hardly sounds original, but who needs originality when it
comes to having fun? The track digs into the rich history of rock'n
roll, with prominent drums and riffs that nod slightly towards Run
Like Hell. This is the kind of song that makes me think that I
urgently need a beer. A Danish beer, close enough.
Those who feared there would be no Syd at all on the album are
contradicted by track two. Baby Lemonade sounds as if the song
has been put in a washing machine with punk rock fabric softener.
Suddenly the song oozes sex and its pistols all over, and it makes me
wonder how it could have sounded sung in a wild cockney accent by Sid.
Yes, that Sid.
Men On The Border keep it tidy though and even use a harpsichord that
gently clashes with the loud guitars. They're such nice boys.
Pills immediately caught our attention with its keyboard line
that has a certain Floydian feel. I Don't Want To Be Your Man
starts lennonesque with harrisonesque undertones until it
changes after the mid-solo into signature MOTB with a couple of sweet
oohs and aahs before the track turns somewhat bitter. Quite a crispy
song.
Have You Got It Yet, another pub rocker that could be from a Status
Quo record. Nice tune, nothing more, nothing less. A typical album
track, with all the tricks from a fun rock track that could turn into
one's live favourite...
The Public: one of Phil's tracks, bringing a change in tone and
atmosphere and a more introspective tune. Old Friends benefits
from an El
Condor Pasa treatment and is quite an earworm, actually. Garden
has a certain 60s beat feel in its 'no no no' refrain, but is one of the
lesser tunes.
Destiny Today is a grower until it sticks in your mind like
Velcro. It reminds me of those sweet pastoral hymns by the gentlemen
Waters and Gilmour, that either are perfectly swell (Fat
Old Sun) or complete duds (Smile).
Its mid-piece adventure into prog-territory and backward tapes gives the
track some extra panache. Of course I can't help to immediately
associate the words 'endless' and ‘river’ with High
Hopes, although the endless is linked to laughter here. That is the
toll of 4 decades of Floydian obsession. The song's atmosphere makes me
think of Where
We Start (Gilmour), that I first found terribly boring (like almost
everything from On
An Island) but that grew on me like a wart on a witches nose.
Warm From You starts a bit like a French pop tune and I more or
less suspected Jane
Birkin to join in. A very good song with some slight Bryan
Ferry & Mick
Ronson influences that gains some momentum near the end...
Terrapin, the second Barrett cover. A weird bend in my brain
immediately links this to early Bowie in his Quicksand
period and of course this tune immediately gets stuck in your mind like
mental flypaper. Cool guitar stuff and a vintage Men On The Border
quality treatment...
Something For The Waiting: what a weird and nice oddity. At the
start it made me think of a toned down mashup of Mad
World (Tears For Fears) and As
Tears Go By (Rolling Stones), but after that the song wanders into
its own folkish psychedelic territory...
Let's Party (Yeah Yeah) starts like a failed Sparks
single and doesn't seem to go anywhere in the beginning (for over one
and a half minute). Luckily it evolves into a cool rocker when the drums
kick in. In a previous review we mentioned Graham
Parker & The Rumour and the classic setup of Rockpile
(with Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe) as possible influences on Men On The
Border and in this case it results in a fucking good song, probably the
best on the album.
The ambient end of the last track, a reprise of Jumpstart, has a
surprise in the form of a friendly nod to Pink Floyd lovers...
Conclusion
So have Men On The Border avoided the second album syndrome, I hear you
ask. Well actually, it is not a bad attempt, not bad at all. I would
have liked some of the tunes a bit messier, the singing a bit less
polished but that is probably my education, not having grown up in a
string quartet, you see...
Throughout this review I have been throwing song references and bands
around, MOTB surely know their history and use it to their own benefit,
turning the sounds of the sixties, seventies and eighties into something
new-millennium-wise.
Don't worry about this, lads, Jumpstart is more than OK, it is quite
excellent as a matter of fact, so you can start fearing the difficult
third album now, and that is gonna be a real drag!
Just as with Shine! the packaging of this album is a feast for
the eye.
The front cover has been designed by Ian Barrett. Ian
Barrett Art
Interstellar Overdrive is the name of a January 2014 Shindig
guide and it's worth every penny you spend on it. In 35 articles on 170
pages, it tries to define and explore the space rock phenomenon. It has
in-dept articles on Acid Mothers Temple, Tim Blake, Neu!, Ozric
Tentacles, Yes and many others without forgetting The Tornados' Telstar
and the obligatory space rock top 30 countdown. A 6-pages article,
called 'The Reluctant Spacerockers', written by Austin Matthews,
investigates the frail relation between Pink Floyd and space rock.
Here it is (we have cropped the picture a bit to only show the band
members and we put some nifty numbers above each person).
Copyright: Pictorial
Press. We honestly think we can publish this picture under the 'Fair
Use' rules, especially as it will be used for criticism, comment
reporting, news gathering and frankly, for taking the piss out of the
copyright holders. See also: legal
stuff.
It is a nice picture, no problem about that, but unfortunately the band
isn't Pink Floyd. There are five musicians on the picture but the
five man Floyd barely existed for 8 days in the beginning of 1968.
This picture goes around for ages but the question if this is really the
Floyd was raised on the 'A
Fleeting Glimpse' forum
in 2009, where Mr. Pinky identified the band as Dantalian's
Chariot.
Hi all. Only to say you that, according with Ian Russell, this picture,
posted in the page
57, shows a band called Dantalian's Chariot, a famous psychedelic
band in the end '60. This photo was also in the Cliff Jones 'Echoes'
book, but has nothing to do with the Floyd at all.
It seemed to be a 5-man Floyd pic, but NOT, we really should know
better, wrong instruments, wrong equipment etc.
That band's something we can't explain
The picture shows five musicians and that particular setup in Pink Floyd
was only known for five live gigs between 12 January 1968 and 20 January
1968. On the Yeeshkul
forum this picture has been further analysed by fans who know these
things much better than we do...
The five men on the picture should be, left to right, numbers one to
five:
1: Roger Waters playing the bass. The picture isn't clear enough
to recognise the bass player, but the bass should've been a Rickenbacker
and the musician on the left is holding a Fender.
2: Nick Mason. First of all: this isn't Nick's drum set. The
silver toms look the same, but the bass drum is smaller and doesn't have
a front skin. Pink Floyd always had a front skin on the drums and
furthermore Nick always had two bass drums instead of one.
3: David Gilmour. It is weird that the third man doesn't play a
guitar. Especially for David Gilmour who normally is glued to his axe
and who was hired in to mimic Syd's solos.
4: Syd Barrett. The man on the picture is playing a black or
sunburst Strat, a guitar Syd didn't have, as far as we know. David
Gilmour only acquired one two years later. A white strat would have been
more appropriate for Syd.
5: Rick Wright. Although the keyboard player is nearly completely
hidden in the dark one can see something that resembles a huge perm.
Richard was never the man to have an afro. It is awfully dark but the
organ doesn't seem to be a Hammond, Rick Wright's favourite instrument.
And there is more. The equipment is not Pink Floyd's. There is a
Marshall stack and a Fender Bassman and these are not Floydian at all,
so tell us the people who know. What the equipment does have in common
with Pink Floyd is a Watkins (aka WEM) PA unit, but that is hardly
unique.
Then there is the projection of the nude woman left on the picture, she
also appears on the right side of the stage (on the uncropped version).
We have never seen something similar on the dozens of live pictures of
the Floyd of that era. Often avant-garde movies were shown on the walls
(or the ceiling) while bands where playing in the psychedelic clubs, but
it is again one of those things that don't add up.
And last: this picture is often described as taken at the UFO club but
the 5 man Floyd didn't play there in the 8 days they existed.
As for the assumption that the band is Dantalian's Chariot with Zoot
Money on keyboards and a young Andy Summers on guitar the cons are about
the same. That band consisted of four members, not five, and Zoot Money
didn't have a big hairdo either. But apparently Jeff Dexter confirmed it
is them allright. So this could have been taken during their UFO gig on
the 22nd of September, 1967.
Copy copy
The above picture is copyrighted by Pictorial
Press who have it in their Pink Floyd folder as number 1398.
Unfortunately they can't give us a date but they do mention it was taken
at the UFO club. To further demonstrate their competence they categorise
Pink Floyd under the category 'metal',
a class they share with KC and The Sunshine Band, Dionne Warwick and
Sandie Shaw. These people are professionals, we can tell you that! (We
are aware of the existence of The
Nile Song and Ibiza
Bar, though.)
But scallywags or not, Pictorial Press has several times managed to sell
this picture. We find it on page 20 of William Ruhlmann's Pink Floyd (1993),
but luckily the author caught the error in time and describes it as 'an
unidentified group at UFO'. This biography is one of those mass printed
'take your money and run' budget releases with scarce text and plenty of
pictures. It is also one of the few biographies that was published in
Dutch and in that edition the picture can be found on page 16.
In 1996 Cliff Jones published the picture on page 25 of his Echoes
biography, not to be confused with the Glenn Povey history book that has
the same title. Subtitled 'the stories behind every Pink Floyd song' the
book attempted to tell the band's history track per track and album per
album, but there it miserably failed. There are plenty of mistakes in
the text and also on the pictures: on page 29 Roger Waters can be seen
but the picture is described as 'a young Dave Gilmour'; page 25 has the
UFO picture this article is all about, captioned 'The Floyd light show,
UFO club'. Apparently David Gilmour was so angry about this book that he
threatened to sue the author:
"The book has a very large number of errors - over 120 - some careless,
some very serious", the star's solicitors, tell me. "We have also
identified four serious libels of David Gilmour. The band take a very
serious view of this and are furious." (Daily Express Dec. 9th 1996,
quoted on Brain
Damage)
An agreement was reached and the book was shipped to the shops, but with
a sticker on page 107 that replaced 23 lines with new text. We will
never know how the passage reads that infuriated Gilmour so much.
Original copies were send back to the publisher and seem to have
vanished from this planet. For those interested in the many mistakes
there is this webpage
showing them all and for a review we can guide you to Brain
Damage. To add insult to injury this book was also issued under the
title Another Brick In The Wall (for the overseas market?) but it
comes with exactly the same mistakes.
London Live by Tony Bacon could be found for years on the
official Syd Barrett website
where they thought it was all about the person that makes them sell
these t-shirts. However, the book is not a Pink Floyd, nor a Syd Barrett
biography but an 'inside story of live bands in the capital's
trail-blazing music clubs' of London. Page 90 and 91 have the
(artificially coloured) picture where it is called 'a majestic lightshow
at UFO', not mentioning any band.
In October last year, a new biography, Behind the Wall, appeared,
written by Hugh Fielder. Floyd anoraks say that the book doesn't really
reveal new facts, apart from the obligatory updates about the Roger
Waters never ending Wall-world-tour. One thing that makes us hesitate
buying it is that the UFO club picture is in there and that it
apparently is attributed to the band we all love.
Shame on Shindig!
Of course Pictorial Press, in their role as entrepreneurial con men, are
not entirely to blame for selling their crap images. Authors and
graphical editors should not only check and double-check text material
but also the pictures they publish.
The guys from Shindig normally deliver excellent work, but before he
gave his fiat for this issue Jon 'Mojo' Mills must have inhaled a
wee bit too much sweet smoke from his water-pipe.
Shame on you, crazy Shindig!
P.S. Obviously The Anchor has warned Pictorial Press about their mistake
and as soon as we will receive an answer this article will be updated. (Update
2016: they never answered.) P.P.S. Shindig was so kind to give us the
following message: "We were duped! I should have spotted it. Many
apologies."
(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may have
been enlarged for satirical purposes.)
The Anchor wishes to thank: the Yeeshkul and A Fleeting Glimpse forums
and their members, b_squared, demamo, Rich Hall, hallucalation, Mr.
Pinky, Orgone Accumulator, saygeddylee, supervehicle, sydzappa...
Sources (other than the above internet links): Bacon, Tony: London
Live, Balafon Books, London, 1999, p. 90-91. Jones, Cliff: Another
Brick in the Wall, Broadway Books, New York, 1996, p. 25. In the UK
this book has been published under the title 'Echoes'. Ruhlmann,
William: Pink Floyd, Magna Books, Leicester, 1993, p. 20. Ruhlmann,
William: Pink Floyd, ADC, Eke (Belgium), 1994, p. 16. Dutch
edition of the above. Fielder, Hugh: Behind The Wall, Race
Point Publishing, New York, 2013.
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
Interstellar Overdrive is the name of a January 2014 Shindig
guide and it's worth every penny you spend on it. In 35 articles on 170
pages, it tries to define and explore the space rock phenomenon. It has
in-dept articles on Amon Düül II, Gong, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, Spacemen
3, Sun Ra and many others without forgetting the sci-fi movie
soundtracks of the fifties (Forbidden Planet!) and the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop (Doctor Who!).
In a six pages article 'The Reluctant Spacerockers' the on-off
relationship between Pink Floyd and space rock is examined and
what an enjoyable essay that is.
While journalists, who are nothing but a bunch of lazy buggers anyway,
have labelled the band as space rockers, its members denied this, in
particular Roger Waters who reacted in his usual diplomatic style:
“Space – what the fuck are they talking about?” Probably the bass player
is so demented nowadays that he has forgotten that his lame Amused to
Death album features some alien anthropologists trying to find out
why all these skeletons are sitting before their TV sets.
Then Austin Matthews chimes in and quite intelligible shows where and
how the Pink Floyd used space rock tricks to appease the masses.
Space 1988
There is an error in the article although the author is only partially
to blame. (We are just being gentle here, that spaced out sod could of
course have done a search on the Internet first.) On page 29 David
Gilmour is cited:”To say that we are thrilled at the thought of being
the first rock band to be played in space is something of an
understatement.”
This refers to the Soyuz
TM-7 rocket launch from the 26th of November 1988 five days after
Pink Floyd had released their Delicate
Sound Of Thunder (live) album. The French president François
Mitterrand attended the launch because of cosmonaut Jean-Loup
Chrétien, who was the first western European man in space (this
was his second flight, by the way, his first was in 1982). David Gilmour
and Nick Mason attended because a cassette of their latest album was
sent to the MIR
space station, apparently on demand by one of the cosmonauts. We'll
never know if this is true or just a staged lie but surely there was a
mighty PR machine behind the band who made it clear to the world that
this was the first rock music recording played in outer space.
Which was not true. Simple as that.
spAce 1987
In 2003, while researching for an Orb
biography that would never see the light of day, the Reverend stumbled
upon the electronic band spAce
who had a million-selling disco hit in 1977 with Magic
Fly. The band split in the early eighties but electronic composer Didier
Marouani had a particular successful solo career in Russia (and the
East-European communist countries), often using the spAce name and logo,
depending on the lawsuit of the month that ex-members were bringing on
each other.
Marouani's solo work is slightly reminiscent of Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike
Oldfield or Tangerine Dream and was (still is) inspired by Russian and
American space programs and sci-fi themes. In 1987 he released a CD
called Space Opera (got the slight promotional nudge towards his
old band?) and that CD was taken by cosmonauts Alexander
Viktorenko, Syrian Muhammed
Faris and Aleksandr
Aleksandrov to the MIR orbital station in July 1987, more than a
year before Pink Floyd made all that brouhaha.
In 2003, long before the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit was
founded, the Reverend interviewed Didier Marouani who had the following
to say:
I was composing my album Space Opera and I had the idea to bring
Americans and Russians together on my album which at that time was very
difficult (especially from the USSR). After negotiating with the Soviet
ministry of Culture for 6 months I got the authorization to have the Red
Army Choir together with the Harvard University Glee Club choir, who
were recorded separately.
Following my concept I thought it would be very nice to have this first
Space Opera shipped to MIR and then launched into outer space. They
asked me to wait while they would study my request and in the meantime I
wrote a letter to Mr. Mikhail
Gorbachev who answered very positive.
Two months later the Ministry of Space confirmed an appointment. On
July, the 2nd, 1987 I was received by the Russian cosmonauts and I gave
them a CD, together with a CD-player and 2 small speakers. This was
extensively reported in the Russian press.
The cosmonauts left Baikonur
on the 22nd of July 1987 and in October 1987 the CD, the player and the
2 speakers were launched into outer space. So my music really floats
into space which is for me a very big and happy achievement.
So for sure Pink Floyd did not have the first music in space. During a
concert tour in the USSR, I met cosmonaut Aleksandr Pavlovich
Aleksandrov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, again who told me that he
worked in space for 7 months, listening to my music. [Note:
actually Aleksandrov stayed 160 days in Space in 1987.]
Lie for a Lie
But of course Mr. Gilmour may not entirely have been lying when he said
Pink Floyd was the first rock band to be played in space. Didier
Marouani's oeuvre is more electronic, new age (and recently: dance)
oriented and the Floyd, as we all know, have never flirted with these
musical styles before. (Yes, this is called irony.)
The last laugh may be for Didier
Marouani though. In 2011 he released an album called From Earth
to Mars and it was officially appointed by Roskosmos
as the album that will go with the first manned Russian flight to that
planet. But we earnestly doubt that listening to it for 6 months in a
row will have a positive effect on its crew.
(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may
have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)
Sources (other than the above internet links): Marouani,
Didier: First In Space, mail to Felix Atagong, 01 June 2003.
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
The Birdie
Hop Facebook group has also a side project where people with a
certain arty je-ne-sais-quoi are trying to get something on the
rails. For the moment it is still vague and too preliminary to predict
what may come out of it, but there are some ideas floating around and
these tend to trigger other ideas, and perhaps one day it will surprise
the world.
Opel, 2014
In contradiction to the Reverend, Rich
Hall - one of Birdie's administrators and the creator of the amazing
tribute album Birdie
Hop and the Sydiots - didn't sit on his lazy ass while Alex was
frolicking with the girls around the British landscape (see part one of
this article: A
sunny afternoon with Iggy). He took Syd's Opel track and
added several guitar layers to the original version to make it sound a
bit more finished. Of course it still has the quirky singing, but Rich's
attempt is something of a definitive version and one that could be put
on any Syd Barrett compilation album to come.
Update 2016 06 17: Soundcloud deleted this version a while ago,
but it can be found on Facebook as well:
In Cambridge Alex had the opportunity to meet some people who already
had an advance copy of the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band
album that will come out any day now. Another reason to join Birdie Hop
is that you read and hear things first, straight from the horse's mouth,
so to speak. And, with Alex's blessing, we publish here what well could
be the very first review of this record in the entire world!
A big thanks to my friend and Punjabi brother Warren
Dosanjh who sent me the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band CD (I
had to look three times on the cover to write that correctly).
Of course, the sound and recording quality is not the best, but not as
bad as I feared. It is much better than the 1967 live recordings we have
of the early Pink Floyd. The main members Jack
Monck and Twink
do a great job in all songs, no doubt. The singer, Bruce Michael Paine,
makes some of the songs sound like a special performance of Uriah
Heep or Steamhammer
(obviously). The track listing is a collection of late fifties or early
sixties blues / rock 'n' roll / boogie tunes and a little bit of early
seventies hard rock as well.
I can only hear two guitars.
I hear the perfection of Fred
Frith in the first four songs and again in track 8 and 9, I´m not so
sure of #8 though. Frith is nearly a perfect guitarist and can almost
play nearly everything, nearly (lol)!
I definitively hear Syd Barrett in tracks 5 to 7. But he is not there
for just a little bit, he is almost dominating the songs. He is strong
and good and I´m sure he had practised a lot before, probably at home.
Syd doesn't has the perfection of Frith but he is full of ideas and he
is able to play parts that others can´t play or that others have not the
craziness to play these parts. But at other times he plays
conventionally and fits in perfectly with the song´s structures.
All in all this is much more than I had expected. I only listened to it
once, but I didn't want to withhold you of my opinion.
A last word. How we look at the quality of the performed songs has got a
lot to do with our viewpoints of today. Today we are spoiled by good
concerts and good audio productions, but I'm sure we would all have been
very happy to be there on the 27th of January 1972 in the Cambridge Corn
Exchange!
Perhaps my expectations were so low that I sound a little bit too
enthusiast now. But I am surprised by Syd´s guitar playing. I never
thought that he was in such a good shape as a guitar player. This lets
me believe that Twink is right and that the Stars concerts were far
better than what was written later by people who weren't there.
A detailed review with a full background story and an interview with
Twink will appear later on, simultaneously at the Church and Birdie Hop.
This is part two of Alexander's adventures in the UK, for part one, go
here: A
sunny afternoon with Iggy This is also a prequel of
our Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band article series: LMPTBB
In a previous article, The
Last Minute Put Together Reel Story, you could read how the reel
came into place, how a first copy was found back in 1985 and immediately
seized, in about the most moronic way ever, by Pink Floyd Ltd (or EMI),
who put it into one of their secret locker rooms.
The second (and last) copy was found back 20 years later and when it was
put on sale, EMI nor Pink Floyd reacted, which could have been their
ultimate chance to bury this release forever and ever... They were so
full of themselves they thought they could delay this release even with
another copy floating around.
Easy Action purchased it and after an immense struggle, behind the
scenes, to get the copyrights (partially?) settled it was finally
released, in June 2014. Of course this isn't an audiophile release, it
is nothing more than an audience recording (but one of the slightly
better ones) and the band that plays is rough and sloppy at times, but
they seem to enjoy the gig. The Number Nine jam is, for Barrett fanoraks,
as essential as the Rhamadan
download, that – if our information is correct – has disappeared from
the official sydbarrett.com
servers, but can still be downloaded on iTunes.
The Syd Barrett website
is run by One
Fifteen that, like a good dog chained to Pink Floyd Ltd, has to lick
its master's orifices for a living. Is that why you won't find a trace
of LMPTBB on the official Syd Barrett news overview? And now that we are
on to it, stop that irritating jukebox, will you.
But perhaps we, members of the Sydiot league, are just a bit
over-sensitive and too unrealistic to acknowledge that Syd Barrett was
just a very small sardine in a fishbowl of sharks? Isn't the Reverend
getting too geriatric for this kind of goody good bullshit? Anyway, here
is our second article in our Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band series,
because nobody seems to care if we don't.
Update 2016: in January 2016 the official Syd Barrett website
changed hands. It is now maintained by the Barrett family. After a good
start with some out of the ordinary articles about Octopus
and Bob
Dylan Blues, it has - unfortunately - retreated into internet limbo.
Boogie Nights
After Barrett's second solo album failed to impress the charts Syd
retreated to Cambridge where it became clear that not all was well (see
also: Hairy Mess).
Trying to find his way back in music, at his own pace, he met Jenny
Spires, who had returned to Cambridge as well and was now married to
bass player Jack Monck whom Syd jammed with at least once. On the
26th of January 1972 Jenny took Syd to an Eddie
‘Guitar’ Burns gig that had Jack Monck and John
'Twink' Alder as backing musicians. Of course Twink was not unknown
to Syd, they once had managed to gatecrash the launch party of King
Crimson's first album, high on a dangerous cocktail of Champagne
(from Steve
Peregrin Took) and mandrax (accidentally misplaced in Iggy Rose's
handbag who would otherwise never carry such a thing with her).
Somehow Jenny and Jack persuaded Syd to bring his guitar and when the
Burns gig ended Syd joined the backing band for an impromptu jam. In Terrapin
3 from February 1973 this gig was reviewed by Mervyn Hughes:
Eddie (Burns) does a solo spot, then announces his “Last Minute Put
Together Boogie Band” which consisted of Twink on Drums and Jack Monck
on Bass. This band was given a set on their own and Syd was roped in to
play too. (…) Although he stood at the back (just jamming as he
obviously didn't know the numbers) play he did.
Our previous article
in the LMPTBB series has a testimony of Jim Gillespie who noted that the
jam with Syd Barrett took place as a supporting act, before the Eddie
'Guitar' Burns gig. He claims the LMPTBB played two short sets, one
before (with Syd) and one after (with Bruce Paine). This is just
another example of how memories can differ between persons, especially
after a four decades interval.
In the extremely well written and definitive Stars (and LMPTBB) article: Twilight
of an Idol, Mark Sturdy quotes another witness, Steve Brink:
There was a real natural musical empathy between the three of them. In
any improvisational band, the musicians have to be interested in what
each other are doing, and Syd was genuinely interested. It was just a
free-form jam for about half an hour – more improvisatory than 12-bar
blues, and I’m sure it changed key on any number of occasions. But
there’s always that moment, that dynamic thing when three musicians make
something that works.
Steve Brink was the man who organised the Six Hour Technicolour Dream
festival the next day and perhaps he was secretly hoping for Barrett to
show up again. We can't be sure of what Syd Barrett thought of it all,
but Jenny Spires, Jack Monck and Twink convinced him to rehearse the
next afternoon. The band tried to have Syd sing at least one of his own
songs, but that plan was abandoned as Syd was still too fragile. Fred
Frith, from Henry
Cow fame, was quite disillusioned and would still be after the gig:
Syd played “Smokestack
Lightning” or variations thereof in every song, and didn’t really
sing at all.
Well let's find out if he spoke the truth, shall we?
Why don't you listen to the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band album
on Spotify while reading this interview? (A Spotify membership is
probably needed, but this is free. There is no need to download and
install the Spotify player, the music will (hopefully) play in your
browser.)
It is clear that this is not a soundboard, but an on stage recording and
already after 41 seconds there seems to be a microphone falling out.
Actually this is good news because it accentuates Fred Frith's guitar
playing that surely is inventive and most of the time right to the
point. Don't worry, sound quality will get better after a while, or
perhaps it is just our ears getting used to the recording. The first
number undoubtedly is just a warming up for better things to come.
The band introduces itself after the first track. Tape completists like
to have the full recording of a concert, including guitar tunings and
chatter in between numbers, and these seem to be left in. Of course
every commercial release might be edited and snipped here and there, but
if it is done it is pretty well done. However there are some places
where we think some cuts have been made.
L.A. To London Boogie
Singer Bruce Paine announces the second number as one he wrote himself.
Bruce Michael Paine, who sadly passed away in 2009, started as a folk
singer in Greenwich Village (NYC) in the 60's. Like Dylan, his music
became “electrified" by the middle of the decade, and he signed with
Atlantic Records. He joined the Apple
Pie Motherhood Band after their eponymous first album (1968) and
sang on their second and last (Apple Pie, 1969). Both records can be
found on the web and don't really impress, call it contemporary
psychedelic oddities of the average kind.
After Apple Pie (without the crust, as Nick Mason would say) Bruce Paine
stars in the San Francisco production of the musical Hair,
then he moves to London where he meets drummer Twink and bass player
John 'Honk' Lodge, from Junior's
Eyes and later Quiver.
They form a power blues trio, the 'Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band'
(luckily they didn't pick Honk, Twink & Paine for a band's name). After
some demo sessions at Polydor the band is denied a recording contract
and a disillusioned Honk leaves the band. With Jack Monk as replacement
the band mysteriously ends up in Cambridge, but after about ten gigs the
claim for fame is over.
In May 1972 Bruce Paine briefly joins Steamhammer
for their European and UK tour, but then he calls his European adventure
quits and returns to the States to star in another musical, this time Jesus
Christ Superstar.
Later on he will do session and acting work, with (small) roles in
Married with Children and Quantum Leap. According to his self-penned bio
he appeared in numerous films and television series and kept on gigging
with his own band.
L.A. to London Boogie is a straightforward seventies rock song and the
good thing is that about one minute into the tune Paine's micro switches
back on. Remarkable is that Fred Frith keeps throwing arpeggios around
as if they come thirteen in a dozen. All in all the band plays pretty
tight, but the song itself is nothing more than a good average and
leaves no lasting impression.
Ice
The third song is called Ice. It is a cover from the first Apple Pie
Motherhood Band album, the one Bruce Paine didn't sing on, and written
by Apple Pie member Ted Demos and session singer Marilyn Lundquist. On
the album Ice is a trippy psychedelic blues that seems to go nowhere in
the end but how does the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band deals with
it?
One thing you can say that it is longer, almost the triple longer than
the original. Frith adds guitar lines that don't always seem to be
coherent in the beginning but that get better later on. At the three
minutes mark Twink and Frith start an experimental cacophony and this
makes us wonder if this is what Spaceward Studios archivist Mark
'FraKcman' Graham described as dreadful, stoned, out-of-key noodlings
(see: The
Last Minute Put Together Reel Story). It sure is a weird fusion
between blues, hard rock and the avant-garde prog sound of Henry Cow,
the band Frith started in 1968. The prog-rock stoners in the public
must have loved it. Of course this is a cheap reflection afterwards
but in this track Paine really shows he is the right person to star in
those hideous Andrew
Lloyd Webber rock operas, that man has a throat and he knows how
to use it.
Nadine
A heckler in the audience shouts for some some rock'n roll and we get
the classic Nadine. Also known as "Nadine (Is It You?)" it is a song
written by Chuck
Berry who released it as a single in February 1964. A
straightforward and simple rendition this is, nothing less, nothing
more, these guys know their business.
We haven't said a lot about Twink and Jack Monck yet, but the band
certainly is inspired and well-trained. In the liner notes Twink
reveals that they recorded several demos for Polydor, including L.A.
To London Boogie and one that isn't on this live set, called Smoke.
The band did about 10 gigs in total and as this could well have been
their last gig they were a well oiled machine by now and it shows.
From now on the gig can only get better and better.
2. Eargasm
Drinkin' That Wine
Time to announce a special guest:
We'd like to bring Syd Barrett up to the bandstand. Will you come on
and (???) how about a hand for Syd Barrett?
We hear some polite applause and a guitar that is plugged in. Bruce
Paine tells the public that the last group he toured with in the
States was Gideon
Daniels' gospel band and that he picked the next song from their
set. There isn't much about him on the net, but one comment on a YouTube
video tells this:
I saw Gideon & Power numerous times, and to this day (…) they were the
best live act I've ever seen -- and that includes Jimi Hendrix. I
remember when Mickey [Thomas] joined. Prior to that, there was Bobby
Castro, Bruce Payne [sic], and Charlie Hickox on piano and vocal.
According to Bruce on the Six Hour Technicolour Dream record the song
is about a funky dude who gets drunk by stealing the mass wine but in
fact this is a traditional communion song that has been described in
several anthologies and studies, like The
Negro And His Songs from 1925 (page 136) and Slave
Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands from 1942 (page 249-251):
The swinging rhythm of the communion song, “Drinkin' of the Wine”,
made it a favorite with the chain-gang for cutting weeds along the
highway.
American minstrel Bascom
Lamar Lunsford learned the song around 1900 in Wilkes County,
North Carolina and you can hear him singing it at the beginning of
this video.
The history of the Drinkin' That Wine traditional is fascinating (the
Reverend lost nearly three hours reading about it) but it would bring
us too far. What matters for us, Syd fans, is that Syd Barrett plays
on it and that it is a mighty earworm and the catchiest song on the
album. Once you've got in into your head it is difficult to get it out
again.
The track turns into a power blues that pushes Syd's guitar to the
background at points, but his playing can be well distinguished if you
take attention. His playing is in a different style from Frith's,
muddier, sloppier perhaps... He does not spit out the notes at 120
beats per minute but this is about having a good time and not about a
finger speed race.
This is good, this is really good.
Number Nine
As if a gospel wasn't weird enough, in a Floydian context, the gig
turns even weirder. Number Nine is a bluesy jam that starts pretty
traditional and then develops further into space. This could well be
the highlight of the album for vintage Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett
freaks. It catapults this reviewer back to the Abdab days when the
proto-Floyd struggled with psychedelic versions of Louie Louie and
other R&B standards. This may well sound like early Pink Floyd may
have sounded in their experimental days. In the Barrett biographies to
come this track will be described as being as essential as the
Whitehead Interstellar Overdrive and the recently (and reluctantly)
released Rhamadan. We took the liberty of grabbing some comments on Yeeshkul:
Demamo: “The guitar playing and sound is very "Lanky" and "Gigo Aunt"
ish.”
Orgone Accumulator: “For all his psychedelic leanings, Syd tapped into
that earlier Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly groove, with an emphasis on
percussive rhythm.”
Beechwoods: “I must admit that musically I like it and there is an
interesting progression between Interstellar and his '74 guitar pieces
('Chugga Chugga Chug Chug' etc) that is worth hearing.”
Like Rhamadan this isn't easy listening, but just like Rhamadan it
isn't the disaster everyone feared for either. Listen to it,
concentrate, feel the groove. It will grow on you.
Just before the eight minutes mark a micro falls out again for a
couple of seconds, resulting in - weird enough – a better sound
quality because the sound isn't distorted any more.
Gotta Be A Reason
At ten minutes the track segues into Gotta Be A Reason, probably the
second LMPTBB original on this record. This track is only mentioned as
a separate number for copyright (read: financial) reasons because
after the strophe and refrain it further develops into Number Nine
territory. As a matter of fact, early track listings just mentioned it
as Number Nine (Gotta Be A Reason) and not as two separate numbers.
The jam ends somewhat sloppy with Twink, who has been in excellent
shape throughout the record, in an obvious death struggle on drums.
Perhaps it is just a clumsy way to have Syd unplug his guitar and
leave the stage.
What a weird trip it has been.
3. Afterplay
Let's Roll
The eighth track is named Let's Roll on the CD, and this can be open
to some controversy.
Actually this fun piece is a close cover of Elvin
Bishop's Party Till the Cows Come Home that is equally
irresistible (watch this 2013
version and try not to tap your feet), co-written with S. Colby
Miller and recorded on the Elvin Bishop Group's second album Feel
It! (1970).
While the lyrics of the verses are different in both versions:
LMPTBB:
Everybody out for a have a good time I say wiggle baby and I'll be
mine You gotta shake your legs and wiggle with your hip
Elvin Bishop:
Kick out the windows bust down the doors We`re drinkin` half
gallons and shoutin` for more Take off your shoes and let yourself
go
The refrain, melody and chord progression are almost identical:
We're gonna boogie till the rooster crows We're gonna party till
the cows come home Let's roll. Let's roll. (Let it roll in
the Elvin Bishop original).
Bruce Paine toured with Gideon Daniel's gospel band in the USA, before
he went to the UK, and that musician worked, on different occasions,
with Elvin Bishop, so perhaps a link can be found there. Perhaps both
tracks are based on a communal forefather or traditional, who knows?
When the Reverend remarked on Birdie
Hop that he found it weird that none of the Boogie Band song
credits mentions copyright owners, nor lyricists and composers,
although the two owners had nine years to sort this out, the answer -
from a music insider - was laconic as ever:
It is gray area and not as uncommon as you think, especially in the
world of music. (…) The usual reason is that it's a sorted affair,
meaning multi copywriters on the same tune. The composers also have to
agree with how it is going to be submitted to ASCAP or BMI. So rather
than hold it up, the material gets released.
In other words, by not sorting out the copyrights beforehand, the hot
potato is pushed forward until the record has been released. If the
copyright holders eventually find out they can ask for a slice of the
pie (or in this case: potato) and if they don't: tough luck. And just
yesterday morning the Church was informed that the reason why this
release still isn't widely available in the shops is there still is 'a
small issue with agreements...'
Let's Roll aka Party Till the Cows Come Home gets a great round of
applause, but alas it is time to say goodbye with a last tune,
originally from B.B King.
Sweet Little Angel
Shivers down the spine, although the song is given a somewhat shady
treatment, but that adds to its integrity.
Not only a great band was lost with the Last Minute Out Together
Boogie Band, but lead singer Bruce Paine surely deserved a better
musical career than he actually had. If you don't want to buy this
record for Barrett's involvement, do it to remember Bruce Paine. We
certainly hope he is drinkin' that wine with Syd, up there in nirvana.
Guitars (3 different ones)
The Reverend is so tone-deaf that if you play him a trumpet and tell
him it is a guitar, he will believe you. So all we hear, thanks to
god's unequal distribution of the aural senses, is a mud-pool of
guitar noise. Luckily some people can distinct instruments, like Syd
Wonder does on Late
Night.
There are three guitarists on this set... Two of them play on tracks
without Syd. Barrett's announced when he joins the group in mid-show,
while Frith isn't. I think Frith plays the entire show, with Bruce
Paine on guitar as well.
I also appreciated Alexander's
review (and most of the time, I do hear two guitars).
This could be correct as Bruce Paine joined LMPTBB the day before, on
the Eddie Burns gig, with his guitar to have a jam.
About the tracks with Syd he adds:
"Drinkin' That Wine" - vocals were recorded very loud; I hear three
guitars. Instrumental sections are from 1:50-3:03 (Syd heavily
distorted, playing rhythm, searching, finding a groove - when he
starts to solo, Paine starts to sing again), and 3:41-4:49 (Syd plays
some solid leads).
"Number Nine" - highlight of the set, it begins with a repeated riff
from Barrett. The band doesn't react, so he stops and they all start
again. Some worthy improvisations emerge, as it continues. Frith's
guitar work is more trebly and rather busy, Barrett's comparatively
relaxed and textural. At times I hear three guitars. I really like
what Syd plays in the last couple of minutes.
"Gotta Be A Reason" - it segues out of Number Nine, in a continuous
performance. Syd solos for about 30 seconds near the beginning. Paine
sings a bit, ceases at 2:05. Three guitars again... Frith becomes very
busy... Barrett responds with strong counter-melodies, seems to vanish
sometime after the 5-minute mark.
Conclusion
Sound quality: slightly above bootleg quality, with tape damage
here and there and mikes that fall out (and are plugged in again).
Towards the middle of the gig the sound gets rather distorted due to
the higher volume levels and there is a lot of resonance. At Yeeshkul,
where sound fanatics reside, questions have already been raised that
the cleaning and denoising was clumsily done, but this can't be
verified without a raw tape leaking out.
Performance: sloppy and muddy at times, but great fun that
still can be felt 4 decades later. The band is a typical seventies
power blues construction, think : Led Zep, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple.
Syd is not in super form, but he isn't that bad either.
Packaging: it looks great, with a 12 page booklet and an
exclusive Twink interview, but lacking song copyright information.
Accuracy: grumpy as we are, we need to get the following of our
chest. The back cover correctly places three asterisks next to the
three tracks that feature Syd Barrett. However, both Fred Frith (who
is on all tracks) and Syd Barrett (who is only on three) get an
asterisk next to their name. Blimey, Easy Action record cover people,
you have had 5 fucking years to get that cover right. As mentioned
above, there are 3 guitar players present, something that is
overlooked as well on the sleeve.
Trivia: the poster, used for the front cover, was meticulously
scanned in by Warren
Dosanjh of I
Spy in Cambridge fame and a honorary member of the Birdie Hop
Facebook group. Eternal thanks to Mohammed Abdullah John Alder, not
only for a magnificent performance but also for rolling, pushing and
squeezing the ball.
Many thanks to: Mohammed Abdullah John 'Twink' Alder, Rick Barnes,
Beechwoods, Birdie Hop, Mick Brown, Cyberspace, Demamo, Chris Farmer,
Late Night, Orgone Accumulator, Syd Wonder, Yeeshkul. ♥ Iggy ♥
Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 171-173. Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p.
283-285. Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe,
Plexus, London, 2010, p. 392-400. Six Hour Technicolour Dream
poster scanned in by Mick Brown.
Finally the fourth copy of Spanishgrass has been found. It is
somewhere in that immense country that is Russia, in the hands of the
slightly dadaist artist Stanislav, whom we happen to have met
this summer in Brussels, the territory of Manneken
Pis, Hergé
and Magritte.
If this was an episode of Crime
Scene Investigation, where the actors have the uncanny habit of
talking way too fast, we would say that the net closes around the Syd
Barrett Facebook group Birdie
Hop as all people who have received a copy are linked, one way or
another, to that gang. On the other hand, as Birdie Hop undoubtedly is
the best Syd Barrett group around on Facebook this is not really
earth-shattering news either.
Oseira
The great grey edifice of the Osera monastery stretches out almost alone
within a trough of the Galician hills. A small shop and a bar at the
very entrance of the monastery grounds make up the whole village of
Osera. The carved exterior which dates from the sixteenth century hides
the twelfth-century interior – an imposing stairway, perhaps twenty
metres wide, up which a platoon could march shoulder to shoulder, leads
to long passages lined with guest rooms above the central courtyard and
the cloisters. Almost the only sound during the day is the ring of
hammers where half a dozen workmen are struggling to repair the ravages
of seven centuries. (Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote)
Let's cut the crap, once and for all. Of course the 2014 Spanishgrass
(Twenty Songs About Space And Siesta) 'immersion' set, that has only
been issued in four copies, isn't Syd Barrett's lost Oseira
record. Syd has never visited that monastery. The Spanish blog Sole
En Las Nubes has dedicated some valuable webspace to investigate the
Spanishgrass hoax and managed to trace it back to a Spanish journalist
and photographer who decided to have some fun in a satirical underground
magazine of the mid-eighties. (Thanks to Antonio Jesús for allowing us
to publish his articles in English: Spanishgrass.)
If you call yourself a decent Barrett-fan you should know that by now,
so don't feel insulted.
But this doesn't mean that there isn't a 'Spanishgrass' record by a
'Spanishgrass' band. The numbered and limited deluxe sets have been sent
to four extremely lucky people on 3 different continents. There also
seems to be a regular CD release, but it is pretty limited as well, and
probably you will have to ask for one if you want to receive it, but of
course you need to puzzle out who is behind the record first. Luckily
the set has been released
this week on Bandcamp where you can listen to it, track per track, or download
the album in its entirety on a 'name your own price' basis (0.00$ is an
option as well).
Why don't you listen to the Spanishgrass album on Bandcamp while
reading this review?
Spanishgrass (Twenty Songs About Space And Siesta)
Spanishgrass 2014 is a re-imagination of a record that never was in the
first place. Its maker had to explore the unexplored, like those
medieval cartographers who wrote hic sunt dracones (here are
dragons) on uncharted regions of their maps and who drew mythological
creatures, dragons and sea serpents on the empty spaces.
The record, 57 minutes in total, has 23 tracks (3 more than on the
'original' Spanisgrass), divided into 4 blocks and closely following the
track-listing and the lyrics that have been published by the Solo
En Las Nubes and Holy Church blogs (Spanishgrass,
the hoax revealed). Supplemental lyrics have been taken from The
White Goddess (Robert Graves, 1948) and Imaginary Lives (Marcel
Schwob, 1896).
Like in Eduardo
Galeano's Book of Embraces where every anecdote stands on its
own but interactively forms a complete chapter, each track has its own
merits but unites with the others. The record has been made to listen to
in its entirety, or at least part by part, 4 in total, each separated by
a 'division' Bells track (#1, 2 and 3). An interesting experiment would
be to play the record on shuffle and see what new auditive interactions
are created.
The music consists of evocative instrumentals and up-tempo tunes, with a
spacey, early Floydian, guitar sorrowing in the background, psychedelic
keyboards, fragile percussion and spoken word, whispered mostly in
English and sometimes Galician (Na Outra Banda). Soundscapes and musique
concrète are omnipresent: babbling brooks, chirping birds,
whistling teapots (Breakwater and Tea), a lawnmower (Waste Deep) and
some excited monks.
Do not expect an easy parcours, the music can be annoying,
harrowing, exhausting, cathartic, transcendental, repetitive. It is
impossible to fit the tracks into a single category other than that
melting pot that is avant-garde
or art-rock.
There are traces of early and vintage Floyd (from Ummagumma to Obscured
By Clouds), haunting rhythms that stay remnant in your mind like those
irritating Swans
drones (The
Seer), seventies porn flick lounge tunes, Tarantinesque
exotica, Michael
Nyman's repetitiveness and even (cough, cough)... Spanish bluegrass
rockabilly (Grey Trees).
Either you find this record utterly irritating or utterly brilliant and
the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit seems to fall in the second category.
A masterpiece for non easy listeners, but we have never been easy,
haven't we?
Tracklisting
Part One: Manantial (Spring) / Reverential Mourners / Black Maid /
Plastic Gunpowder / Bells 1 (approx. 14 minutes)
Part Two: Mouse after a fête / Breakwater and tea / Grey trees / Two
bangers + mash / Whining at the moon / Bells 2 (approx. 15 minutes)
Part Three: Greenland / Eu son Dhaga (I am Dhaga) / Na outra banda (On
the other hand) / Un poeta esquece os días de chuvia (A poet forgets the
rainy days) / Saturnalia / Bells 3 (approx. 16 minutes)
Part Four: William Phips / Stede Bonnet / Gabriel Spenser / Gospel at
Noon / Waste Deep / Frog (approx. 13 minutes).
(This is part three of the the Spanishgrass,
the myth continues... series. Hi-def scans and pictures will be
revealed, on an irregular basis, at our Spanishgrass
Tumblr gallery.)
Many thanks to Mr. Anonymous for sending us this package. Spanishgrass
can be downloaded at Bandcamp. ♥
Iggy ♥ Libby ♥ Babylemonade Aleph ♥
One of the Reverend's great advantages of his Pink
Floyd adoration, somewhere in the mid-seventies, was the start of a music
collection. Barry
Miles' excellent Visual Documentary (first edition: 1980) had
a separate discography with Floydian collaborations and once the
Reverend had a job, in the early eighties, he also had the dough to buy
Floyd - and later: Hipgnosis
and Harvest
- related records at the local second-hand record shops thus creating a
musical spiderweb with Pink Floyd at its centre.
After the Reverend had joined an illegal local university radio station
his weekly excursions to the record shop resulted in an even bigger
appetite for vinyl. At Saturday afternoon he would arrive home with the
catch of the day, open his Who's Who in Rock Music, look for the
records he had just bought and underline all personnel (band members and
session players) he found in the alphabetical listing. The book came in
very handy for making the playlist for a weekly rock, blues, jazz and
folk show he co-produced, trying to find connections from one record to
the other. The world-wide web, dear children, didn't exist yet in those
days and links weren't just one click away as they are now.
(The Reverend's heavily damaged record collection can be admired at the Record
My Cat Destroyed Tumblr blog.)
Mr. Smith goes to London
This last remark is one Norman
Hurricane Smith could have made (actually, does make) in his
autobiography John Lennon Called Me Normal. The book was first
issued as a limited edition at a 2007 Beatles Fan Fest but, as we found
out this year to our amazement, it can also be found at Lulu
where it is sold for a healthy 25$ a piece. If you don't know for sure
who Norman Smith is you can read this excellent obituary, written by Syd
Barrett biographer Gian Palacios, hosted at the Church: John
Lennon called him 'Normal'....
Invasion Force Venice
Smith was a pilot during world war II but he never saw any real war
action, making the chance of being killed nearly zero. He was part of a
secret missions squadron, so secret that military bureaucracy didn't
give them any. When the European side of the war was over, and most
soldiers were sent home, Smith and his colleagues were stationed in Venice
of all places to await further secret invasion plans, but apparently
they were forgotten after Japan's surrender as there were no more enemy
countries to secretly invade.
While England was on ration books, Norman sunbathed on Venice beach,
dining on espresso, grappa, Parma ham and stuffed mushrooms, longing for
the woman he had married in May 1945. In the evening he would go to the
Excelsior hotel for a Cinzano soda where he sat in with the twelve-piece
jazz band. It took British headquarters two full years to locate (and
dismiss) the secret squadron, probably by following the trail of
limoncello and sambucca bills, and back home - in 1947! - Smith decided
for a weird career change and became a refrigerator repair man.
The Beat is on
But his heart had always been with music and Norman's second lucky
strike came when he managed to bluff himself in at EMI where he became
an apprentice sound engineer in 1959. No two without three and Smith's
third chance of a lifetime came when some Liverpudlian lads auditioned
for a record deal, supervised by his boss George
Martin.
And here is where Smith's autobiography, that was in fact ghost-written
by Neil Jefferies who is called 'Research' throughout the book, becomes
foggy. The audition, so remembers Smith, did not take place as George
Martin professes, repeated in every Beatles biography since. Norman
hints that something smelly was going on from the beginning and that
shady deals were taking place in the dark corners of the studio,
something to do with song-rights. Each individual Beatle earned only one
thousand of a pound per single while others had their greasy hands in
the till. He repeats this several times in the book, but he never
actually directs his accusations at someone, although George Martin,
coincidentally, always seems to blend in the background.
You can read between the lines that Norman Smith and George Martin
weren't best pals, especially since the one didn't find it necessary to
mention the other in his memoirs despite the fact that Smith had
engineered and produced about a hundred Beatles songs. When George, who
has acquired something of an infallible status, got hold of the news
that Norman was writing his side of the story, Smith was summoned to an
informal meeting in the EMI gardens that is a bit described like Galileo
Galilei having to explain heliocentrism
before Pope
Paul V and the Roman
Inquisition.
Pink: the Colour of Money
But this blog is not about the true story of The
Beatles but about (early) Pink Floyd. George Martin may have done a Don
Corleone on Norman Smith, but when it comes to his own financial
matters the Hurricane is overtly discreet as well. So you will find only
one flimsy reference in the 501 pages book that Smith once had a solid
financial share in Pink Floyd (12,5% as was leaked out by Neil Jefferies
in a Record Collector article). About his financial share in the Beatles
catalogue (and all the other bands he recorded and produced): not a word.
It was destroyed by the production. It is a fucking good song.
his reaction is likewise:
There might be no L's in Waters, but there are two in 'Bollocks'.
Smith is too much of a realist and doesn't adhere the romantic or
conspiracy viewpoints many fans have of the downfall of Barrett:
Syd wasn't anybody else's fault. Syd was Syd's bloody fault.
At one point Norman Smith, Parlophone head suit after George Martin had
left EMI with doors smashing, got a phone call from Bryan Morrison
bragging about a new fantastic band he wanted to promote. They met at
UFO:
I found myself having a pint with him in the filthiest,
foulest-smelling, shittiest dive that I'd ever been to in my life so
far. (…) I thought: Maybe I should just go home?
But there,
deep in the bowels of the Tottenham Court Road, in the overpowering pong
of Patchouli oil, dope, and incense and sour ale that would have a tramp
gagging but maybe not your average music-biz exec, I suddenly found
myself listening to some great sounds and also being propositioned by
some starry-eyed chicks.
Of course Norman also met the Pink Floyd managers:
Andrew King and his friend Peter Jenner were not hippies and certainly
not mohair-suited wide-boys out on the make. (…) They were about as
middle-class as you could get. They both attended Westminster School (…)
and both their fathers were clergymen! - Yes! (…) Two vicar's sons
managed Pink Floyd!!!
Unfortunately that's about all there is to find in the 500 pages book
and while every fan was eager to read some revealing stories about
Smith's involvement with The Beatles and Pink Floyd the biography never
goes further than occasional cocktail party small talk. Some anecdotes
are literally repeated five time throughout the book and it would have
benefited to be two-thirds shorter. To add insult to injury most
anecdotes seem to be about... Elvis
Presley, a man Norman Smith never met, nor recorded, but thoroughly
admires.
Fish Report with a Beat
The DVD Pink Floyd: Meddle - A Classic Album Under Review is one
of those rather redundant, take the money and run, documentaries where
people – who have nothing to do with Pink Floyd whatsoever – claim to
make an in-depth analysis of the band or one of its albums, but it has
an interesting ten minutes Syd Barrett featurette with Peter
Banks (Syn, Yes) and Norman Smith. (Direct link: Syd
Barrett - The Early Days Of Pink Floyd.)
In the interview Norman Smith tells Syd didn't come over as the 'musical
director' of the Floyd:
He spoke through his songs.
Instant Salvation
The featurette tells more about how Jugband
Blues came into place (and we will not try to find out what this has
got to do with Meddle).
It was actually Norman Smith's idea to add 'some kind of a brass band'
at the end of the song and Barrett suggested to ask the Salvation
Army for that.
Through his many contacts Norman managed to hire several International
Staff Band musicians, 12 to 14, he recalls, but it was probably
closer to 8. Random Precision author David Parker assumes these
musicians were 'moonlighting' as the International Staff Band itself has
no trace of this session in its archives, besides that the complete
troupe had over 30 members.
Syd Barrett showed up in the studio an hour too late, that 19th of
October 1967, and Norman asked him what he had in mind. As legend goes
Barrett didn't have any ideas and suggested that they could play
anything they liked. Then he left the studio. Smith adds somewhat wryly:
He not only left the studio, he left the building.
We can imagine this was not the kind of behaviour Norman Smith liked,
for several reasons.
First he was perhaps too much of a musician and so he did fully
understand that classical trained performers need a score in front of
their noses before they blow their horns. Pink Floyd would have about
the same problem, a couple of years later, with Atom
Heart Mother, when the orchestra refused to play the score the way Ron
Geesin had written it. The composer had to be removed from the
studio seconds before he wanted to punch one of the musicians in the
face.
Second, Norman Smith also had a financial responsibility towards EMI,
and the bookkeepers wouldn't have liked the idea to pay an eight man
brass band to sit on their chairs for tea and biscuits.
So he played the tape in front of the session players and when they
couldn't come up with an improvisation, these guys were not rock
musicians who can fabricate a lick in seconds, Norman wrote a score he
was rather embarrassed with, but it ended up on the record anyway.
You have those hardcore Sydiots, with the emphasis on the last part, who
find the idea to have a brass band play anything they like one of those
genial flashes half-god Barrett had. Hagiographer Rob
Chapman is one of them:
Once again Syd’s wilfully anarchic approach was in direct conflict with
the regimented working methods of an unsympathetic producer.
Actually Smith's testimonial shows it was exactly the contrary. Syd was
the one who acted unprofessional by first arriving too late and then by
leaving the studio when he was asked to direct the session. Smith was
obliged, back against the wall, to deal with the problem, which he did
splendidly in the short time that was left to him. One thing is for
sure, Normal really earned his 12,5% on this one...
Gangsters
It is generally believed that Jugband Blues is one of the songs Barrett
wrote in the second half of 1967, together with Vegetable
Man and Scream
Thy Last Scream. This trilogy is regarded by some as being highly
introspective songs where Syd, in an exceptional state of clarity,
describes his own vulnerable and frail psyche.
However, in a recent autobiography from Chris
Joe Beard, Taking The Purple, a remarkable (and until now
untold) story has been put forward.
Chris Joe Beard is lyricist / songwriter from the band The Purple Gang
who had an underground novelty hit in 1967. They started as a
traditional jug
band and changed their name from The Young Contemporaries to The
Purple Gang, forced by their manager, a roaring 1920’s aficionado, who
thought a clean-cut Chicago gangster style would be cool. Looking for a
scene to make some promo pictures they stumbled upon a shop in Kings
Road, where they accidentally met Paul
McCartney.
The shop's name Granny
Takes A Trip inspired Joe Beard to write an innocent and funny song
about a rich old lady wanting to meet movie-star Rudy
Vallée in Hollywood, adding it to a catchy melody that had been
composed by piano player Geoff Bowyer. The song was a cross-over between
traditional jug and pop and as such producer Joe
Boyd preferred it to their more traditional repertoire à la Bootleg
Whiskey (that has John
'Hoppy' Hopkins on piano, by the way).
Boon Blues
Incidentally The Purple Gang wasn't the only band Joe Boyd was producing
that week in January 1967. On Sunday, the 29th, a band called Pink
Floyd, then still without a contract, had recorded Arnold
Layne at Sound Techniques studios. Syd Barrett had listened to
Granny Takes A Trip and had humorously remarked it would become #2 after
the Floyd's soon to be number one. But Joe Boyd had other important news
as well:
There’s a tape of some of his [Syd Barrett, note from FA]
songs and we think a good, quick follow-up to Granny is on there. Syd
thinks Boon Tune is the one for you. There are several. There’s
one called Jugband Blues but he’s still working on that.
Unfortunately Nathan
Joseph from Transatlantic Records objected, saying that they
didn't want to pay out any royalties to someone from outside the band.
Boon Tune was shelved, although it would surface as Here
I Go on a Barrett solo album. Joe Beard took the reel-to-reel demo
home where it was promptly forgotten and it has never been found back
since.
While the UFO
crowd accepted The Purple Gang in their midst, the BBC did
otherwise, and for exactly the same reasons.
Granny's Satanic Trip
The title of The Purple Gang's first single Granny Takes A Trip was
tongue in cheek and ambiguous enough to please the psychedelic crowd. By
then the band did not like the gangster outfits they had to wear from
their manager and opted for a more alternative look. Singer Pete Walker,
nicknamed Lucifer, was a member of a coven, an actual warlock, and used
to wear a red robe with a big upside down cross while gigging. During
the Wizard song he would do the odd pagan routine on stage, much
appreciated by the psychedelic crowd (see also: Arthur
Brown). However, for the BBC, the word 'trip' in the lyrics
and the satanic outing of the singer was enough reason to ban the song.
The BBC boycott dwindled the chances for The Purple Gang to get into the
charts, to get their (only) record sold, to find gigs and they
eventually disbanded. If this proves one thing, dear sistren and brethren,
it is that selling your soul to the devil will not automatically
guarantee you chart successes.
The first half of the biography, from the start to the psychedelic years
of the band, is interesting, funny, packed with anecdotes and deserves a
5 star rating. The fact that the BBC banned Joe Beard's only chance to
have a million-seller has left its marks though and unfortunately the
author feels the need to repeat that every few pages. The later years,
with Chris Beard as a solo-artist and struggling to get The Purple Gang
back on the road are a bit tedious. But the Kindle
edition is only 5$, cheaper than the latest Pink Floyd interview in Q,
Mojo or Uncut, so it is money well spent. For the first half, the book
is a real treat to read.
Two Of A Kind
Eventually, in 2006, Joe Beard and a reincarnated Purple Gang covered Boon
Tune in a jug band way.
At a book signing / reading in 2007, Joe Boyd talked about the lost demo
tape Syd Barrett gave him in early 1967... He said Syd described the
tape's contents as 'songs the band didn't want to do' (Source: timeline
of songs). According to Julian Palacios that tape had 6 tracks and
Boyd and Jenner even discussed the possibility of Syd Barrett doing a
solo record, next to the Pink Floyd's first, with skiffle or music-hall
style songs. (By the way, did you know we have a Peter Jenner interview
on this blog? An
innerview with Peter Jenner)
It is not sure if there have been one or two Barrett demo tapes floating
around as both men claim they took a tape home and lost it. Joe Boyd
received his from Syd Barrett and remembers it had six whimsical tunes.
Joe Beard, who got his from Boyd, only remembers two songs: Boon Tune
and Jugband Blues.
Jugband Blues turned up, heavily re-arranged, on [A] Saucerful of
Secrets – still with the kazoos.
Jugband Blues was recorded by Pink Floyd in October 1967 and as also
Vegetable Man was made during the same session it has always been
assumed these songs are somewhat related. In Nick Kent's 1974 article The
Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett Peter Jenner is quoted:
Y'see, even at that point, Syd actually knew what was happening to him.
(...) I mean 'Jug Band Blues' is the ultimate self-diagnosis on a state
of schizophrenia. (Source: The
Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett)
But if the song had already been written earlier than January that year,
this comment doesn't make much sense, does it? What if Jugband Blues is
just one of those songs where Barrett copies and juxtaposes 'sampled'
messages from other sources, like he did in Octopus
(See also: Mad Cat
Love).
Still got the Blues for You
Sara
Martin began her career in 1915 as a vaudeville singer and in the
twenties she became one of the popular female blues singers, next to Bessie
Smith and Ma
Rainey. In September 1924 she recorded some tracks with jug player Earl
McDonald and fiddler Clifford Hayes and one of those was
called Jug
Band Blues.
At first sight that song has nothing in common with Barrett's version.
Sara Martin's song is a variation on the popular blues theme of the
person who wakes up in the morning and sees that her daddy
(lover) is gone. In the first decade of the twentieth century a 'daddy'
in African American slang was still a pimp, but later on the term was
generalised to a male lover.
Did you ever wake up, find your daddy gone? Turn over on your side,
sing this lonesome song I woke up this morning between midnight and
day You oughta see me grab the pillow where my daddy used to lay (Source:
Jug
Band Blues Sept. 16, 1924.)
One riddle is how Barrett came up with the title 'Jugband Blues'. The
chance is small he could find it (mentioned) on a compilation album like
he did with Pink
Anderson and Floyd
Council. (The origins of the Pink Floyd name is extensively
discussed at Step
It Up And Go.) Sara Martin's Jug Band Blues was only issued as a
B-side on two different 78-RPM records from 1924, perhaps in two
different versions: Don't You Quit Me Daddy (Okeh 8166) and Blue
Devil Blues (Okeh 8188, not to be confounded with the Walter
Page track from a few years later). Her 'complete recorded works'
(1996, Document)
do not include the 'Jug Band' track and probably there weren't any
compilations around in the sixties including that track.
Jug Band Blues can (now) be found on a 1994 Clifford Hayes compilation.
He had several bands in the twenties, with Earl McDonald on jug, and
issued several songs under different names for copyright reasons. Earl
McDonalds also had several bands in the twenties, with Clifford Hayes on
fiddle, which doesn't make it simpler to find any accurate information.
The jug band / skiffle revival resulted in at least three compilations,
between 1962 and 1967, but none of these have Sara Martin's Jug Band
Blues. We checked.
Skiffle
had been very popular in the UK and was not unknown by the Pink Floyd
members. Rick Wright had a brief flirtation with skiffle, before
converting himself to to trad jazz and Syd Barrett's brother Alan played
sax in a skiffle group in Cambridge.
Cambridge had its own deal of skiffle bands, or groups that had started
as skiffle units but moved to R&B or rock'n roll later on. The
Scramblers, who turned into The Phantoms, The (Swinging) Hi-Fi's, The
Black Diamonds, who evolved into The Redcaps, with Tony Sainty on
bass (see: RIP
Clive Welham: a biscuit tin with knives). Tony Sainty was also in
The Chequers, as was Ricky Wills who would later appear on David
Gilmour's first solo album. Willie Wilson, who played with Quiver
and on the first Gilmour album as well, had been a (replacement) drummer
for The Zodiacs, whose roots had also been in skiffle. You can read all
about them in the excellent, awarded (and free) I
Spy In Cambridge book The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge.
Blue Devil Blues by Sara Martin and her Jug Band (with its flip side:
Jug Band Blues) has been nominated to be the very first recorded jug
band number in human history and that fact may well have been known in
Cambridge jug band and skiffle circles. Syd Barrett may have been well
aware of this as well.
A Dream within a Dream
Deconstructing Syd's Jugband Blues.
1
It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here and I'm most
obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here
Rob Chapman is right when he describes the opening lines from Jugband
Blues as 'cultivated sarcasm' and refuses to see this as a declaration
of schizophrenia like Peter Jenner does or did. David Gilmour, and
others with him, see Jugband Blues as a transitional song, between his
earlier work with Pink Floyd and his later solo songs, that are more
mature and experimental in their lyrics.
Actually this opening is just an (awkward) introduction like in so many
skiffle songs, including Here I Go.
This is a story about a girl that I knew She didn't like my songs and
that made me feel blue.
Of course Here I Go is pretty conservative and lends its intro from
trademark skiffle à la Lonnie
Donegan:
Well, this here's the story about the Battle of New Orleans. (Battle
of New Orleans) Now here's a little story. To tell it is a must. (My
Old Man's A Dustman) Now, this here's the story about the Rock Island
line. (Rock Island Line)
Syd Barrett transforms the traditional skiffle opening line into a dark
and mysterious setting.
2
After the introduction the anecdote is usually explained or elaborated
on, although the enigma in Jugband Blues only gets bigger.
and I never knew the moon could be so big and I never knew the moon
could be so blue
A big moon, or super-moon
(a popular term dating from 1979), happens when the full moon and the
earth are at its closest distance, sometimes resulting in a so-called perigean
spring tide. We had one at the 9th of September 2014 and they happen
about every 412 days. So it is an event that only happens once in a
while.
An astronomical blue
moon, or the second full moon in the same month, happens about once
every two or three years. Blue
Moon is also a standard, from 1934, that has been performed by
countless bands and singers, and that has a romantic connotation.
Blue moon You saw me standing alone Without a dream in my heart Without
a love of my own
The title of that song (and Syd's lyric) is taken from the saying 'once
in a blue moon', meaning a rather rare occasion and Wikipedia
learns us that the term 'blues' may have come from 'blue devils',
meaning melancholy and sadness.
3
and I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes and brought me here
instead dressed in red
Just like the 'head / down / ground' symbolism is used several times in
Syd songs (see: Tattoo
You) so does 'shoes / blues'. Apples and Oranges has a dedicated
follower of fashion who alliteratively goes
shopping in sharp shoes
, while Vegetable Man walks the street
in yellow shoes I get the blues.
Earlier in his songwriting career, Barrett was much influenced by an
American folkie:
got the Bob Dylan blues, and the Bob Dylan shoes.
Of course shoes and blues has always been something of a nice pair as
was already proved by Robert Johnson in Walking
Blues (1936):
Woke up this morning I looked 'round for my shoes You know I had
those mean old walking blues
Incidentally the Pink Floyd latest (and last?) song Louder
Than Words, with its (horrible) lyrics written by Polly
Samson, reflects the same:
an old pair of shoes your favorite blues gonna tap out the rhythm
In the ballad 'Blue Moon' (see point 2) the protagonist who was lost /
alone has been helped / cared for by someone. In Jugband Blues we seem
to have the same situation. At this part of the song a second actor is
introduced who tries to assist the first one.
4
and I'm wondering who could be writing this song
Barrett almost describes an out-of-body experience in the first part of
the song. Pete Townshend claimed he had one once using STP, a drug that
also Barrett was familiar with. This is another variation on a theme of
absence as the narrator is present and absent at the same time. Make
your name like a ghost, suddenly seems more autobiographical than ever.
5
I don't care if the sun don't shine and I don't care if nothing is
mine and I don't care if I'm nervous with you I'll do my loving in
the winter
This apparently happy refrain is a pastiche on Patti
Page's 1950 hit I
don't care if the sun don't shine, directly paraphrasing two of its
lines. Elvis Presley and Dean
Martin also covered this song (and all three of them also did Blue
Moon, by the way):
So I don't care if the sun don't shine I'll get my lovin' in the
evening time When I'm with my baby
Syd's 'I'll do my loving in the winter' makes the refrain fairly darker
than in the original though. It is as if Barrett is indefinitely
postponing the happiness that could be waiting for him.
6
During the refrain some kazoos make the point that this is a jug band
song after all, and then a psychedelic Salvation Army band (perhaps Syd
did see the contradiction before everybody else) jumps in. Then it is
the time for one of the weirdest codas ever:
And the sea isn't green and I love the queen
At first sight this is just a nonsense verse. There was a song called The
Sea Is Green, written by The
Easy Riders, an American calypso and folk-song trio and used in the
1958 Windjammer
travelogue documentary, but this is a long shot. In the song a sailor
expresses his hope to find his family back when he returns home. By
implying that the sea isn't green, Barrett loses all hope to see
his loved ones back.
6.1 A possible Beatles connection (Update: 1st of November
2014)
At the Late
Night forum, Wolfpack came with another explanation, that
seems far more plausible than ours, he remembered that The Beatles' Yellow
Submarine has 'a sea of green' in its lyrics. Actually the term is
used twice in that song. It comes up at the first strophe where the
story is told about a man who travels in a yellow submarine:
So we sailed up to the sun Till we found a sea of green
The term shows up again in the third strophe where it is told that the
sailors live a life of ease:
Sky of blue and sea of green.
The song is not originally from the 1968 animated movie,
but from the 1966 Revolver
album, where it was the obligatory Ringo Starr track. Paul
McCartney wrote it with Ringo in mind, hence the simplicity of the
melody and the nonsensical subject. McCartney had a little help from his
friends John Lennon and Donovan,
who actually came up with the green sea lines.
Barrett, in a much darker mood than McCartney, who had a children's song
in mind, declares there is no such thing as a sea of green. The sailors'
unburdened life has been based on a dream.
There is a second similarity between Yellow Submarine and Jugband Blues.
Although Norman Smith was not involved in the recording it has a (short)
interruption by a brass band, just after the line 'and the band begins
to play'. Engineer Geoff
Emerick, who is on backing vocals with George Martin, Neil
Aspinall, Pattie
Boyd, Marianne
Faithfull, Brian
Jones and Brian
Epstein, used a 1906 record of a military march, altering it a bit
to avoid copyrights. Several sound effects were used for the song,
including the cash register sound that would later be used by Pink Floyd
on Money. There is another Floydian connection, although bit stretched,
Echoes (1970) has the Roger Waters line 'and everything is green and
submarine', but that last is used as an adjective, not as a noun.
Unfortunately we will never know if Norman Smith thought of Yellow
Submarine when he proposed Syd Barrett to add a brass band in between
the strophes.
7
and what exactly is a dream and what exactly is a joke
The 'Carrollesque quality of the closing couplet', to quote Rob Chapman
again, is omnipresent. In Lewis
Carroll's 'Through
The Looking Glass', on a cold winter evening, Alice climbs through a
mirror where chess pieces are alive. Alice meets the White and Red Queen
and the 'joke' subject is briefly spoken about:
Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child's more important than a
joke, I hope.
Dreams are discussed more often in the book, even the surreal
possibility that Alice is nothing but a 'thing' in the Red King's - so
somebody else's - dream:
If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go out — bang!
— just like a candle!' (…) When you're only one of the
things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.
At the end, with Alice back in her house, she still isn't sure what
really happened and in whose dream she had landed.
Let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. (…) You see,
(…), it MUST have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my
dream, of course — but then I was part of his dream, too!
As we now know that Jugband Blues might have been written before Barrett
had his apparent breakdown, all speculation about this being an intense
self-description could be wrong, unless of course Syd altered the lyrics
between January and October 1967.
We'll never know for sure.
Ever drifting down the stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life,
what is it but a dream?
≈≈≈ THE END ≈≈≈
Other Meaningful Articles
While you’re at it, why don’t you read the articles about the auctions
in 2022 and 2023 or the Rich Hall / Felix Atagong / Birdie Hop interview
with Peter Jenner, dating from 2014?
Many thanks to: Baby Lemonade, Syd Wonder, Wolfpack and all participants
from the Jugband
Blues thread (started in 2008) at the Late Night Forum. ♥ Iggy ♥
Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Beard, Chris
Joe: Taking The Purple. The extraordinary story of The Purple Gang –
Granny Takes a Trip . . . and all that!, Granville Sellars (Kindle
edition), 2014, location 858, 1372, 1392. Blake, Mark: Pigs Might
Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013 reissue, p. 18. Carroll,
Lewis: Through
the Looking Glass, Project Gutenberg. Chapman, Rob: A Very
Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 191. Dosanjh,
Warren: The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge, I
Spy In Cambridge, Cambridge, 2013, p. 32, 40, 44, 50. Jefferies,
Neil, Dartford's Finest Band, Record Collector 417, August 2013,
p. 54-55. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd,
Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 21. Manning, Toby: The Rough
Guide To Pink Floyd, Rough Guides, London, 2006, p. 34. Palacios,
Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London,
2010, p. 25, 298, 314. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry
Red Books, London, 2001, p. 99. Smith, Norman 'Hurricane', John
Lennon Called Me Normal, Lulu (self-published), 2008, p. 218, 373,
397. Unnumbered section: #8.
So here it is. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's The
Endless River review of what undoubtedly is the most anticipated
record of the year.
Read
The album has four, mostly instrumental, suites, that Pink
Floyd prefers to call sides. Each suite has several tracks, but
these are best listened to in one piece as they form one ensemble. The
'luxe' edition has a 39 minutes extra DVD or Blu-ray with 6 videos of
1993 studio rehearsals and 3 audio tracks. The Blu-ray version is the
most complete (and expensive) as it also has a stereo PCM, a 5.1 DTS and
a 5.1 PCM version of the album, whatever these acronyms mean.
The front cover concept was designed by Ahmed
Emad Eldin, in what could be called ersatzHipgnosis
style, probably chosen because it evokes the boatman who was present in The
Division Bell artwork (and, in lesser extent, on A
Momentary Lapse Of Reason). The other artwork is credited to the
usual gang of graphic designers: Aubrey
Powell, Stylorouge,
StormStudios
and, weirdly, Hipgnosis, although that company stopped in 1983. The
24-pages booklet has a maritime feel: compasses, maps, logbooks... The
lettering misses a piece in most letters, to accentuate the missing
keyboard player, who has been credited on 11 of the 18 tracks. Storm
Thorgerson is remembered as well in the credits.
Think
The album was created out of rejected 1993 jams and demos, with Richard
Wright, Nick Mason and David Gilmour, that were probably revisited to be
added to a Division Bell anniversary
set of one kind or another. Rejected is too strong a word because
way back, twenty years ago, it had been the idea to turn the The
Division Bell into a double CD-set, what was abandoned for lack of time.
That second album turned into the apocryphal The Big Spliff that
still sits in Gilmour's studio in an unfinished form and that was
assembled by Andy
Jackson. Phil
Manzanera was asked, in 2012, to work on it, but refused.
I don't wanna hear. I wanna hear every single piece or scrap that was
recorded, everything. Outtakes from Division Bell. Everything.
In December 2012 Manzanera puzzled dozens of unfinished pieces into a
skeleton, divided into four 12 minute suites, out of 20 hours of
material. According to Manzanera, Pink Floyd thanked him and immediately
put the work in a box where they forgot it. Martin
'Youth' Glover however says that he was invited in June 2013 and
that David Gilmour had already worked on the two different versions of
the project.
Within about 40 seconds, it sounded like Floyd. It was absolutely
magical. (…) Listening to unreleased Pink Floyd recordings with David,
the hair was going up on the back of my arms.
Youth then created a third version and in November 2013 a meeting was
held between the two remaining Pink Floyd members and the three
producers: Andy Jackson, Phil Manzanera and Youth. Gilmour and Mason
picked the best ideas from each version and started working on something
that could have been an atrocious Frankenmix but that turned out
quite coherent in the end.
Listen
Side One: ambient spaces
"Things Left Unsaid...", Gilmour, Wright "It's What We Do",
Gilmour, Wright "Ebb and Flow", Gilmour, Wright
Things Left Unsaid (4:27): a very ambient, Cluster
One atmospheric, introduction, with some voice samples of the Floyd
members. Tradition wants that it only starts morphing into something of
a melody after the two minutes mark. It gradually slides into It's
What We Do (6:17) that thrives on a Shine
On You Crazy Diamond moog synth and traces of Marooned
later on. This is a typical Floydian spacey slow blues, ideal for those
fans who want to chill out with a big spliff. It's lazy and slow and
probably a bit boring for some, a typical trademark of the Floyd sound,
and just because it is so intriguingly and deliberately slow, the first
thrill of the album. It continues into Ebb and Flow (1:55),
mainly an epilogue to the previous track.
Actually the first suite is pretty daring to start with in the hectic
days we are living in today, this is so contradictory with contemporary
music it nearly feels alienated. It's the kind of suite that will be
used in nuru massage parlours around the world.
Sum (4:48), there's that Cluster One intro again with ambient
effects switching towards an Astronomy
Domine space trip. Then it nods to an early seventies style Floydian
jam, One
Of These Days, although bigger and louder, including that good old
perverted VCS3
machine.
Skins (2:37) further elaborates on the A
Saucerful Of Secrets tribal rhythms and this is the first time in
years we hear grand vizier Nick Mason take the lead on a track, finally!
We could never think we would be so happy with a fucking drum solo.
Gilmour makes his guitar scream à la Barrett in Interstellar
Overdrive in something that can be described as a beat bolero. The
track ends with some minor guitar effects, just for the sake of the
effect and glides over to Unsung (1:07), an intermezzo that is a
bridge to the ending of this suite, the magical Anisina (3:17).
Those who think this is Wright in a jazz lounge must be contradicted.
This is 100% Gilmour and it brings shivers down the spine, even if this
a known track that has been bootlegged before as a Division Bell outtake.
The second suite is the experimental one, although the experiment is
limited not to scare the casual listener away. We've heard people say
that this Pink Floyd record is more of the same. And it's true. But who
complains when The Rolling Stones or U2 bring out their umpteenth album
sounding exactly like the previous one?
Side Three: all that jazz
"The Lost Art of Conversation", Wright "On Noodle Street",
Gilmour, Wright "Night Light", Gilmour, Wright "Allons-Y
(1)", Gilmour "Autumn '68", Wright "Allons-Y (2)",
Gilmour "Talkin' Hawkin'", Gilmour, Wright
The lost art of conversation (1:43) is an introductory piano
piece by Wright, obviously with some guitar effects from Gilmour. It
segues into On Noodle Street (1:42), that is, as the title gives
away, nothing but a light jazzy noodling, featuring Guy
Pratt, Wright's son-in-law. It is easy listening for Floydheads,
just like the next track Night Light (1:42). The first three
tracks are merely the introduction for the highlight of this side, and
perhaps the album.
Allons-Y (1) (1:57), is a two-piecer and a Run
Like Hell copycat, only much better (actually, we find Run Like Hell
one of the worst tracks by the Floyd). It is irresistible and the moment
we really started tapping our feet. The mid-piece of Allons-Y is Autumn
'68 (1:35), the much discussed archival bit taken from a Wright
improvisation from the Royal Albert Hall in 1968, reminding us vaguely
of a movement of Mike
Oldfield's Tubular
Bells, only this dates from about five years before. Allons-Y (2)
(1:32) is a reprise of the first part to close the circle.
Talkin Hawkin' (3:29) starts rather like one of those slow
evolving (and a bit tedious) pieces from On
An Island, but is – yet again – irresistible in its meandering
movements. Nobody is so immaculate in creating these lazy and slightly
boring moods than Pink Floyd. With its Stephen
Hawking samples this track is the obvious link to The Division Bell,
but the track itself is the counterpart of Keep
Talking.
The third suite is the most light-hearted one, perhaps the most
commercial and catchy, and it surely is saved by, here we go, Allons-Y.
Side Four: turn off the lights
"Calling", Gilmour, Moore "Eyes to Pearls", Gilmour "Surfacing",
Gilmour "Louder than Words", Gilmour, Samson
Anthony
Moore, who made the Broken
China album with Richard Wright is responsible for Calling
(3:38) and it certainly has the mood of that pretty depressed, and
unfortunately underestimated, album. The atmosphere is somewhat
reminiscent of David
Bowie's Warszawa,
it is an ambient and dark and haunting piece. It is a nice thing from
Gilmour to have added this obvious nod to Rick's solo album and one of
the more interesting pieces of the album.
Eyes To Pearls (1:51) breathes the air of Angelo
Badalamenti's Twin
Peaks and has hidden hints of Money
and One Of These Days, but one can find traces of earlier work in about
all tracks on this album. Didn't Nick Mason quip once he was in the
recycling business? Surfacing (2:46) acts as the intro to the
final song, it seems a lesser track at first, but it has a weeping
guitar that hit us right in the heart / stomach / balls. Actually most
of the numbers may not be seen as individual pieces but as movements of
each suite and as such they perfectly serve their roles.
Louder Than Words (6:37) was gravely discussed when it came out,
it has been called Floyd by numbers and Polly
Samson's lyrics are of syrupy soap series quality but in this
context and as the coda of the album it just works great. Just listen to
that piano intro by Wright, the last we'll probably hear, that
irresistible refrain, the perfect ending solo, also the last we'll
probably hear... This is Gilmour at his best and for once he doesn't
stretches it too long, what was his problem on the previous Diet Floyd
records where he had the habit of putting six minute guitar solos in
three minute songs. Gilmour's playing on this album is to the point and
you never get the feeling he is showing off like on, for instance, On An
Island, although it is clear he bought a new set of pedals.
Communicate
This is a great album, a classic in the making, although perhaps only
for the die-hard fans, and is far much better than we had ever hoped for.
(A third article, with a more critical approach to the album can be
found at: Chin
Chin.)
More reviews at A
Fleeting Glimpse and Brain
Damage. Illustrations (except the Rick Wright picture) taken from
The Endless River and The Division Bell.. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Bonner, Michael: Coming
back to life, Uncut, November 2014, p. 35 – 41.
The new Diet Pink
Floyd album The Endless River is conquering the world,
perhaps to the absence of any real competition. We don't think Susan
Boyle's cover version of Wish
You Were Here will pose a real threat, does it? In Holland the
album, currently at number one, sells five
times as much as the number two.
The Endless River is a slow evolving, ambient piece of work with obvious
nods to the Floyd's glorious past... one hears traces of A Saucerful Of
Secrets (Syncopated Pandemonium), Astronomy Domine, Careful With That
Axe Eugene, Cluster One, Interstellar Overdrive, Keep Talking, Marooned,
Money, One Of These Days (I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces), Run
Like Hell, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and probably half a dozen more
we've already forgotten.
The familiarity of it all has created raving enthusiasm for some and
'mainly yesterday's reheated lunch' for others and this also seems to be
the opinion of the press. Mark Blake (in Mojo)
politely describes the album as 'big on atmosphere, light on songs',
Mikael Wood (in the Los
Angeles Times) states that Pink Floyd drifts towards nothingness
with aimless and excruciatingly dull fragments.
While the 1987 A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album was a David
Gilmour solo effort, recorded with 18 session musicians and with the
Pink Floyd name on the cover to sell a few million copies more, The
Endless River originally grew out of jams between Gilmour, Mason &
Wright.
Actually these were rejected jams, not good enough to include on The
Division Bell, but over the years they seem to have ripened like
good old wine. Well that's the PR story but in reality Andy Jackson,
Phil Manzanera and Martin 'Youth' Glover had to copy bits and pieces
from twenty hours of tape and toy around with every single good sounding
second in Pro
Tools to obtain something relatively close to Floydian eargasm. Phil
Manzanera in Uncut:
I would take a guitar solo from another track, change the key of it,
stick it on an outtake from another track. 'Oh that bit there, it
reminds me of Live At Pompeii, but let's put a beat underneath it.' So
then I take a bit of Nick warming up in the studio at Olympia, say, take
a bit of a fill here and a bit of fill there. Join it together, make a
loop out of it.
This doesn't really sound like an organic created piece of music, does
it? The result is a genetically modified fat-free sounding record
and while this is the most ambient experiment of Pink Floyd it will
never get extreme, despite Martin Glover's presence whose only ambient
house additions seem to be the On The Run VCS3 effect that comes
whooshing in several times. Youth isn't that young and reckless any more
so don't expect anything close to the KLF's Madrugada
Eterna, Jimmy 'Space' Cauty's Mars
or the Orb's A
Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the
Ultraworld, unfortunately.
Update April 2017: One and a half year after the record has been
released the involvement of Nick Mason can be finally discussed as well.
Pink Floyd know-all Ron Toon at Steve
Hoffmann:
Nick had nothing to do with this project except to play a few new drum
tracks basically being brought in as a session drummer. Of course he was
/ is a member of Pink Floyd but his involvement in this project was
minimal at best. The vision was David's and the other producers and Andy
[Jackson] did most of the work. Source: Pink
Floyd - The Early Years 1965-1972 Box Set.
But the music isn't the only thing that seems to be embellished. Last
week long-time Echoes
mailing list member Christopher, also known as 10past10, went on
holidays, taking with him the new Pink Floyd CD and, as reading
material, Nick Mason's Inside Out book. Then something happened
which unleashed the power of his imagination (read Christopher's
original mail).
The mid-book picture of The Endless River shows the Astoria studio with
Rick Wright, David Gilmour and Nick Mason jamming in 1993, taken by Jill
Furmanovsky. This picture has been stitched out of several shots,
the borders don't match (deliberately) and Nick Mason (or at least his
arms) can be seen twice.
But Christopher was in for another surprise when he looked at the fourth
picture gallery in Nick Mason's Inside Out soft-cover (or on page 313 if
you have the coffee-table edition). It shows another picture of the same
session, with Rick Wright, David Gilmour and Bob Ezrin.
Now look at the man in the middle, the one who doesn't like to be called
Dave. Christopher:
If you look closely at every piece of David's clothing, his hair, the
way he is holding his guitar, the chords, the lot. It all matches
exactly ... too much not be a match.
Not only does The Endless River centrefold superimposes Nick Mason
twice, but they have glued in David Gilmour from another shot (and
removed Bob Ezrin).
And still, that is not all.
Look very
closely to Gilmour's face in the 1993 picture (left) and to his
face on the 2014 release (right). Christopher explains:
The difference is in the original shot. David has a double chin. In
The Endless River shot it has been dealt with.
There will be no fat on The Endless River, not on the music and
certainly not on Air-Brush Dave.
(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may
have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)
Many thanks to Christopher (10past10), Ron Toon. Pictures courtesy of
Jill Furmanovsky. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): 10past10
(Christopher), Alcog Dave no more, mail, 2014 11 14. Bonner,
Michael: Coming back to life, Uncut, November 2014, p. 39. Echoes
mailing list: to join just click on the appropriate link on their sexy echoes
subscription and format information webpage.
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
Christopher's original posting to Echoes: (Back to article)
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:00:32 +1000 From: 10past10 Subject:
Alcog Dave no more ... To: echoes@meddle.org
Hi Ho All,
I do believe there is photographic trickery afoot!
Exhibit A: The centrefold picture in The Endless River depicting
Richard, David and Nick in the studio.
Exhibit B: Inside Out; the fourth lot of pics in the paperback or p313
in hardback (1st ed), depicting Richard, David and Bob Ezrin.
Obviously it is a different pic of Richard and Bob/Nick. But I reckon
the picture of David is the same one; except for one difference.
So, I reckon, to get the wider shot for the TER CD centrefold (I don't
know how it may or may not appear in the other versions as I haven't
seen them yet), they have made a composite photo using the shot of David
rom the one Nick originally published and shots of Richard and Nick from
one or two different pictures.
If you look closely at every piece of David's clothing, his hair, the
way he is holding his guitar, the chords, the lot. It all matches
exactly ... too much not be a match.
Does this matter? Of course not. Why not do that to get what you need.
Obviously Nick himself is double exposed when you look at his arms.
Is it worth pointing out? Yes (but just because you can, not because it
will change the world). Why? Because of the one difference.
The difference is in the original shot David has a double chin. In The
Endless River shot it has been dealt with.
Some time ago I was castigated for calling David, Fat Dave. So I changed
that to Alcog Dave. He is that no more. In my more whimsical moods I
shall hence forth refer to him as "Air-Brush Dave".
This is a review of the Dutch edition of Hugh Fielder's Pink Floyd
biography Behind The Wall. There is nothing wrong with your browser
as the review is in Dutch as well.
Er zijn niet zoveel Nederlandstalige Pink Floyd biografieën bij mijn
weten. Eigenlijk ken ik er slechts een: William
Ruhlmanns low budget Pink Floyd, een boek dat waarschijnlijk
rechtstreeks in de ramsj terechtkwam en dateert uit 1994. Nu, met een
nieuw Floyd album in de rekken en kerstmis voor de deur is er een
Nederlandse vertaling van Hugh Fielders Behind The Wall dat in
oktober 2013 uitkwam en ook al niet te veel potten brak. Ik dien ook
even Charles Beterams Pink
Floyd In De Polder (2007) te vermelden dat een overzicht bevat van
de Pink Floyd optredens in België en Nederland en dat ik, tot mijn grote
schande, nog steeds niet gelezen heb. Spijtig want ik zou graag willen
weten wat hij te zeggen heeft over de doortocht van de jongens in mijn
geboortestad Leuven in februari 1968, tijdens de taalrellen die hadden
geresulteerd in het ontslag van de toenmalige regering. Blijkbaar brak
er een vechtpartij los in de zaal tussen Vlamingen en Walen die
enigszins geamuseerd werd bekeken door de bandleden en die er verder
niets van begrepen op een 'Fuck Belgium' commentaar na (Nick Mason
bericht hier overigens foutief over in zijn autobiografie Inside Out).
Een Franstalig artikel over dit incident vind je hier: Pink
Floyd en Belgique.
Rammelende Blues
Maar over naar de orde van de dag. Hugh Fielder is een rockjournalist en
-criticus, die een aantal boeken op zijn actief heeft staan en blijkbaar
ook heeft meegewerkt aan meerdere 'Inside' DVD-documentaires (Pink
Floyd, Genesis, Led Zeppelin,...), documentaires waarvan je enkel kan
zeggen dat ze van een zeer twijfelachtig allooi zijn. Een pluspunt is
dan weer wel dat zijn vader, Denis Fielder, een bevlogen
muziekleraar was die onder meer Syd Barrett en Roger Waters de
beginselen van het vak bijbracht. Hugh is van Cambridge, een aantal
jaren jonger dan de Pink Floyd leden en in 1965 was hij zanger bij The
Ramblin' Blues die op een dag zonder gitarist kwamen te staan, net
voor een optreden. Ze huurden David Gilmour in die een vlekkeloos
parcours reed en er was enkel het probleem dat Gilmours gage even hoog
was dan wat de band gekregen had voor het hele optreden. Pink Floyd
'Behind The Wall' is dus zijn kans op een revanche, hoewel we er
ongeveer zeker van zijn dat Gilmour nog steeds de meestverdienende is
van de twee.
Het boek heeft als ondertitel 'de complete geïllustreerde geschiedenis'
en dat is het ook, het is rijkelijk voorzien van bekende en onbekende
foto's en bevat ook illustraties van posters, tickets, backstage passen,
singlehoezen en dergelijke. Tekst en beeld vullen elkaar mooi aan en het
is niet zo dat de tekst enkel een lapmiddel is om een fotoboek te
verkopen, zoals in een aantal andere biografieën het geval is. Grafisch
is het boek af, vaak is ook de achtergrond van het tekstveld gekleurd,
wat zeer mooi oogt, maar in een paar gevallen de tekst moeilijk leesbaar
maakt, een detailkritiek misschien.
De tekst is eenvoudig, accuraat, to-the-point, verstaanbaar voor de Pink
Floyd leek, en dat is klaar duidelijk het publiek waarvoor dit werd
geschreven. Hugh Fielder is een belezen man en vermeldt eerlijk waar hij
de mosterd heeft gehaald, wat niet altijd gebeurt in biografieën,
nietwaar Rob Chapman? Anderzijds is Hugh Fielder enkel een raconteur,
hij heeft feiten en anekdotes geplukt uit andere boeken en artikels en
herhaalt die, netjes geordend, op zijn eigen manier. Enkel in de
Cambridge-sectie, aan het begin van het boek en het begin van de Pink
Floyd geschiedenis, voegt hij wat toe. Dit is dus geen Pink Floyd studie
zoals Mark Blake er een schreef, maar dat was ook niet de bedoeling. Dit
is hapklare brok.
Tekst
Zijn er dan geen punten van kritiek? Jazeker die zijn er, maar enkel
wanneer een Sydioot en Floyd-fanaticus de tekst uitvlooit, op zoek naar
een bron van ergernis. Hier gaan we dan.
Op bladzijde elf staat te lezen:
Barrett speelde gitaar [bij Geoff Mott and the Mottoes] en zong covers
van Buddy Holly en Eddie Cochran. Ook leverde hij instrumentale
bijdragen aan de aankomende Britse gitaarband The Shadows.
Syd Barrett die als broekvent songs leurde aan The Shadows, dat kan toch
niet waar zijn?
Het is ook niet waar want in de Engelse, originele tekst staat:
Barrett played guitar and sang covers of Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran
while also performing instrumentals by seminal British guitar band the
Shadows.
Dit is dus blijkbaar een vertaalfout van Ireen Niessen van Vitataal
die dit boek een Nederlandse zwier gaven.
Als lezer heb ik me hier en daar geërgerd aan de vertaling die me, om
het enigszins pejoratief uit te drukken, wat te Noord-Nederlands getint
is voor deze Zuid-Nederlander van het Vlaamse type. Ik kan aannemen dat
'Pink Floyd played like bums that night' niet zo makkelijk te vertalen
valt en dat 'Pink Floyd speelde als een stel lapzwansen' (p. 31)
eigenlijk een geniale inval is. Waar ik wel moeilijkheden mee heb is dat
het David Gilmour citaat
Hé joh... als zus en zo zou gebeuren, en dit en dat, zou je dan
belangstelling hebben? (p. 38)
Hé joh, geen Vlaming die dit over de lippen krijgt en het zwakt het
tongue-in-cheek 'nudge nudge' enigszins af.
Het boek is gelardeerd met vlotte taal ('het leek alsof Rick Wright zijn
snor drukte', p. 133) wat deze plechtstatige dinosauriër, die Abraham
heeft gezien, raar in de oren klinkt, maar dit boek is dan ook
geschreven om een jong publiek wat bij te brengen over deze prachtband,
dus wat schwung is waarschijnlijk niet misplaatst. Over taal en
taalgevoeligheden kan je net zolang redetwisten als Gilmour en Waters
deden over de klankkleur van Dark Side Of The Moon, uiteindelijk heeft
iedereen en niemand gelijk en dient er een compromis gesloten te worden.
Bronkennis
Hugh Fielder heeft zelf ook een aantal fouten gemaakt in het boek. Zoals
eerder aangehaald citeert Fielder verscheidene bronnen, meestal met
kennis van zake, maar als de inhoud inmiddels achterhaald werd, gaat het
natuurlijk om foutieve informatie. Zo weten we intussen dat Davy 'O List
slechts eenmaal Barrett verving tijdens de Jimi Hendrix package tour en
niet meerdere malen, blijkbaar heeft Fielder nou net niet Pigs Might Fly
van Mark Blake gelezen (dat blijkt overigens uit de bibliografie
achteraan):
'In the past I’ve exaggerated and told people I played more shows,’ he
[Davy 'O List] admits now. ‘But that’s only because I wished it had been
true.’
Dat Barrett zijn tanden poetste tijdens het bezoek aan de Wish You Were
Here sessies is iets dat Rick Wright ooit heeft gezegd maar Mark Blake
heeft dit verhaal later grotendeels ontkracht op het Late
Night forum en in het rocktijdschrift Mojo 211 (2011). Hierover
heeft de Heilige Kerk van Iggy de Inuit (sic) ooit bericht: The
Big Barrett Conspiracy Theory.
Fielder is net iets te enthousiast wanneer hij zegt dat Nick Mason 'een
paar vintage auto's' diende te verkopen om de A Momentary Lapse Of
Reason te financieren. Mason gaf enkel een auto in onderpand, zoals hij
zelf schrijft in Inside Out:
In my particular case I was a bit short of ready cash for the millions
required, so I eventually went down to the upmarket equivalent of the
pawn shop and hocked my 1962 GTO Ferrari.
Het bovenstaande is natuurlijk kommaneukerij van een Floyd fanaat met
teveel tijd. Fielders tekst is een consequent, coherent geheel zonder
naar de een of andere stroming over te hellen (het zogenaamde Waters
versus Gilmour kamp om niet van de Barrett fanatici te spreken). Het
boek is bijgewerkt tot en met Waters' The Wall tournee (zomer 2013) en
de auteur kan er ook niet aan doen dat zijn statement dat The Division
Bell 'vrijwel zeker het laatste studioalbum van Pink Floyd is'
ondertussen aan diggelen werd geslagen.
Beeld
Dikwijls worden woord en beeld onafhankelijk van mekaar samengesteld in
dit soort boeken, vaak met een desastreus resultaat, maar ook hier valt
het best wel mee.
We starten met een flater van jewelste, waarschijnlijk te wijten aan het
te oppervlakkig lezen van bronmateriaal. Profiles, Nick Masons tweede
soloalbum, was geen samenwerkingsproject met Mike Oldfield, zoals en in
de tekst en onder de foto op pagina 162 staat. Wel zingt Maggie Reilly
op Lie For A Lie, samen met David Gilmour. Maggie is natuurlijk te
vinden op vijf verschillende Mike Oldfield albums en is
medeverantwoordelijk voor enkele van zijn allergrootste hits.
Op bladzijde 155 staat een afbeelding van de single When The Tigers
Broke Free, maar de tekst zegt dat het gaat om de 'albumcover van The
Wall: Music From The Film'. Er was wel ooit sprake van een The Wall
soundtrack en/of een Spare Bricks album, maar die werden nooit
uitgebracht. De enige officiële soundtrack van The Wall was een single
en geen album. Hebben we reeds gezegd dat we kommaneukers zijn?
De grootste fout staat op pagina 21 waar een foto wordt omschreven als
Pink Floyd in de UFO club. Zoals uitvoerig, om niet te zeggen:
langdradig, beschreven in een eerder artikel (Pictorial
Press selling fake Pink Floyd pictures!) gaat het hier niet om de
(zeer tijdelijke) vijfmansformatie Pink Floyd met Syd Barrett, David
Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters en Richard Wright, maar om een geheel
andere band, misschien (maar ook niet zeker) Dantalian's Chariot. Het is
een spijtige zaak dat Pictorial
Press, die de rechten op deze foto bezit, nog steeds niet aarzelt om
de foto onder valse voorwendsels aan de man te brengen.
Het is ons opgevallen dat heel wat foto's in het boek van Nederland
komen, we vermoeden dan ook dat een en ander duchtig werd
vernederlandst, wat enkel toe te juichen valt. Zo zijn er foto's van
1968, genomen in Den Haag (en een enkele in Brussel), Holland Pop
Festival 1970, Ahoy 1971, Olympisch Stadion 1972, Ahoy 1977, Utrecht
1977, Rotterdam 1984 (Roger Waters), Feyenoord 1988... Er is ook de
cover van The Pink Floyd songbook, een (illegale) Nederlandse
gestencilde songteksten compilatie uit 1977 die je kon kopen in elke
zichzelf respecterende platenzaak.
Discografie
De discografie, aan het einde van het boek, vermeldt een aantal
compilaties niet, hoewel ze wel staan afgebeeld: Master Of Rock, Works.
Een echte schande wordt het pas wanneer in de individuele album
besprekingen More en Obscured By Clouds niet eens worden vermeld,
waarschijnlijk omdat het maar om soundtracks gaat, wat in het geval van
Obscured zeer kort door de bocht is.
Besluit
Maar als je een nichtje of neefje hebt dat wil weten waarom je zo
gebiologeerd bent door de groep van Dark Side of the Moon of The Wall,
kopen die boel. Zelf houden wij het liever bij Pigs Might Fly en Dark
Globe, natuurlijk, maar als aperitief kan dit tellen. Het kan alleen
maar leiden tot meer.
Update Juli 2017: dit boek is sinds kort ook in een bijgewerkte
versie beschikbaar in de ramsj.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Bronnen (anders dan de bovenvermelde internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 35-36, 99. Fielder,
Hugh: Behind The Wall, Librero, Kerkdriel, 2014. Nederlandse
editie. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd,
Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 291.
When the Reverend spotted an expensive collectors limited edition
4 DVD & book set in his favourite bookshop last week there was a little
voice going in his head whispering: “Don't buy it, don't buy it...”
Unfortunately the Reverend has this problem with authority, so this good
advice was completely ignored. The moment he had paid 60 Euro (44.65£,
68.00$) he immediately regretted the purchase, but by then it was
already too late. “Told you so!”, said the voice in his head. Little
bugger.
The Reverend, Felix for the rapidly diminishing herd he calls his
friends, should have been warned by the fact that there was no author on
the cover and that the editor goes by the name of Blitz Books,
but the promise on the back that read: four DVD films packed with
in-depth rare archive interviews with the band, made him forget several
of the seven deadly sins.
So he returned to Atagong mansion with Pink Floyd: 50 Years On The
Dark Side tucked inside his overcoat and he only opened it in the
privacy of his study room.
The Book
At first sight the 110 pages coffee table book looks impressive. It
starts with an essay titled Pink Floyd In The Beginning that
covers their early history from The Pink Floyd Blues Band, although that
name may have been some kind of an urban legend, until Ummagumma, so
roughly from 1965 till 1969. It's not particularly innovative, nor
original as Barry
Miles has his 2006 The Early Years book that roughly covers
the same old ground and that is well worth the read. But, it has to be
said, the article is not bad and does quote a lot from early interviews
with the band.
The text, however, is not original, it was first published in a book
called Pink Floyd: Reflections and Echoes from Bob
Carruthers, that also had – coincidence ? - 4 DVDs packed with
in-depth rare archive interviews with the band.
We're starting to see a pattern here.
Part one ends at page 58 but, mind you, two-thirds of the pages are
filled with pictures from our friends at Pictorial
Press who, by the way, still haven't answered if they have any Iggy
Rose pictures in their archive, which we know with certainty they do.
After the quite enjoyable read about vintage Floyd and the somewhat
quirky attempts from the remaining members, plus one newbie: David
Gilmour, to find a new direction it is time for the rest of the Floydian
history. That second part start with The Wall.
The Wall?
Does this mean the book skips a whole decade, not coincidentally the one
that had the Floyd's classic albums Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish
You Were Here and the somewhat underrated Animals and Obscured By Clouds?
Apparently it does.
Blitz Books' business plan is to have some text on paper, any text, so
that they can put (coloured) photographs around. On top of that The
Wall-part mainly tells what happens on the album, song per song, so it
is not even a review. We're still trying to recover from the disastrous
catastrophe that was Roger Waters' The Wall show in summer 2013 and we
solemnly confess we didn't read this chapter because reading about The
Wall is even more tedious than listening to the album. We once tried
getting through Phil Rose's Which One's Pink that analyses the
concepts of the different Roger Waters albums, as a solo artist and with
Pink Floyd, but it only made our psycho-therapist wealthier.
Discography
The third and final part of the 50 Years On The Dark Side book is a
discography of the studio albums from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
till The Division Bell, with a (small) description of every song. The
Floyd's debut, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is described as 'deeply
disappointing' where 'two completely different, and totally
irreconcilable, musical personalities battle for supremacy'. As long as
we know where these fans really stand it is fine for us.
Not only is the page order for the A Saucerful Of Secrets review wrong,
but the (anonymous) author also seems to have found a new Floyd track
called 'Heavenly Voices', probably the ending piece of the title track
is meant, better known as 'Celestial Voices'.
The other album reviews are generally acceptable and from page 100 to
103 The Wall comes around for a second time and again all individual
tracks are mentioned with some titbits her and there.
It would have been an excellent idea to have added the track-listing of
The Endless River, but that was too much asked from the Blitz boys. To
add insult to injury the Division Bell review omits the last three
songs... because there are no more pages left in the book. Really, it
is, we're not trying to tell you a joke or something...
Conclusion
This book is an even greater insult than the history book that could be
found in the Pink Floyd 1992 Shine On box set that mysteriously
ended in mid sentence on page 107. All in all 50 Years On The Dark Side
is not a book, it is merely text on paper.
The DVDs
After the obvious debacle that is the piece of printed paper pretending
to be a book, it was time for the Reverend to sit in front of the
monitor and have a four hours DVD watching marathon.
Theoretically the four DVDs should be well attached to plastic 'teeth'
(probably there is a more scientific term) at the inside-back-cover, but
these things are from such a poor quality that when you grab the book,
at least one DVD will lose its grip and fall with a kling klang
on the floor. Yes, Kraftwerk has build an empire on these things.
This is not really unique for Blitz Books. David Gilmour's solo album On
An Island is packed in a digibook that has a rubber round soft cap to
hold the compact disc. The only problem is that once you take the CD out
it often is impossible to slide it again over the rubber plug. It's
about the same problem as getting a cork back inside a bottle. In the
Reverend's case this lead to the situation that for years he knew where
the digibook was, but that he had lost the whereabouts of the CD.
The same situation happened with the over-expensive Pink Floyd Immersion
sets of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. While the marbles
("Marbles? Yes, marbles.") were individually packed in bubble-wrap bags
the unprotected CDs and DVDs would freely roam all over the box,
collecting scratches during the transport on plains, trains and
auto-mobiles. (Read more at: Fuck
all that, Pink Floyd Ltd.)
The Syd Barrett Years
DVD 1 (The Syd Barrett Years) seems to be a compilation of at least 2 to
4 other documentaries as one recognises people from the awful 'Inside
Pink Floyd' set, the 'Critical Rock Review' series, the aforementioned
'Reflections and Echoes', plus 'Musical Milestones - Reflections on the
Wall', although these documentaries may already share the same pieces.
It is a common trick from these low-budget companies to repackage the
same garbage. The documentary 'Pink Floyd behind the wall' is basically
the same, perhaps with some cuts here and there, as 'Pink Floyd in their
own words' to give just one example.
But actually the first DVD isn't that bad as it has interviews with
Duggie Fields, Joe Boyd, Norman Smith, Ron Geesin and the recently
deceased John 'Hoppy' Hopkins...
Pink Floyd in Development
DVD 2 (Pink Floyd in Development) highlights the Floyd's career from A
Saucerful Of Secrets to Atom Heart Mother. Here is where shit really
starts to hit the fan. Basically these are interviews with people who
have absolutely nothing to do with the band whatsoever, sharing their
opinions. One could say that the presence of some journalists eases the
pain a bit: John Cavanagh (read an interview with him here: so
much to do, so little time), author of the 33 1/3 book The Piper
At The Gates Of Dawn has the most intelligent things to say,
followed by Syd Barrett & the Dawn of Pink Floyd biographer
Mike Watkinson. Chris Welch who wrote the stinker Learning To Fly
in 1994 comes in as third.
The notable exception on the second DVD is Ron
Geesin, who gives his side of the Atom Heart Mother story, but stays
gentle in regard to the boys who didn't want to put his name on the
sleeve. Ron's name can only be found in small print, on the credits for
the suite, and that duly pissed him off at the time. Geesin wrote the
sublime The Flaming Cow in 2013 and as Nick Mason provided the
introduction it seems that the problems have been solved 44 years later.
Even with Ron Geesin's testimony the second disk lingers on and on,
dragging for minutes that turn into quarters, a bit like Atom Heart
Mother itself, one might say. If you might have a 2005 DVD called The
Ultimate Critical Review: Atom Heart Mother don't bother to watch
this as it is the same material.
Getting back to the sleeve one more time. We are probably all aware
about Lullubelle the third, the iconic cow on the Atom Heart Mother
album cover. It is funny..., no we're looking for another term here, it
is pathetic that the people on the 50 Years On The Dark Side DVDs
keep on discussing the merits of Storm Thorgerson and his Hipgnosis team
without actually showing the covers. What they show are replicas of the
covers, a generic cow for Atom Heart Mother, a three-dimensional prism
for Dark Side of the Moon, a psychedelic picture of Battersea Power
Station for Animals. This is the Aldi approach, replacing the
real deal with a cheap lookalike.
Momentary Lapses
Let's be brief about the third and fourth DVDs that are called
'Momentary Lapses 1971-1977' and 'Momentary Lapses 1979-1994'. Again
these DVDs are filled with people who have absolutely nothing to do with
the band saying lots of things about the band. One wonders if these
'specialists' could talk for 52 minutes about a loaf of bread instead,
and probably they could: “This is a remarkable loaf of bread, considered
when it was made in 1975 without the technology of today. That loaf of
bread has set the standard for all other loafs of bread to come.” Ad
infinitum.
The only exception on these DVDs are some interviews, but not as
elaborated as the Ron Geesin one before, with Clare Torry, who
did the vocals on The Great Gig In The Sky, Snowy White who sheds
some light on his (live) work on Animals and The Wall, Andy Roberts
who replaced Snowy White as a Surrogate Band member on the 1981 Wall
shows and Tim Renwick who sessioned for the diet Pink Floyd that
emerged after Roger Waters had left the band. Don't get too overexcited
either, what they tell is something that has been rehashed in a million
magazine articles and books before.
Several of the Pink Floyd specialists are chosen a bit too incestuously.
Amongst these are people who are (or were) associated to Classic Rock
magazine and members of the prog-rock band Mostly Autumn, who –
what a coincidence! - were under contract at Classic Rock when the
Inside Pink Floyd DVDs came out. As a matter of fact the second Inside
Pink Floyd DVD tried so hard to be a Mostly Autumn promotional film that
the Reverend took a solemn oath never ever to allow any of their
mediocre albums to enter Atagong mansion.
As stated before, 'Pink Floyd: 50 Years On The Dark Side' is a
combination of four or more of these pseudo-documentaries and – on paper
– it was a good idea to weed out the crap and only to keep the
interesting stuff. Both 'Pink Floyd: Reflections and Echoes' and 'Inside
Pink Floyd' have interviews with members of the band, although coming
from other sources like the BBC Omnibus documentary, radio shows,
snippets from TV clips, parts of the KQED performance and others.
Unfortunately, all copyrighted material showing the Pink Floyd lads and
music has now been removed and only the talking heads remain. '50 years
on the dark side' is even crappier than the original DVDs it has
compiled. This is not a documentary, this is a bloody insult.
And oh, by the way... that line on the back cover saying 'four DVD films
packed with in-depth rare archive interviews with the band', nothing of
that is true, but you had figured that out by now, we think.
Conclusion
The only reason why we should advise you to buy this DVD set is to
ritually burn it, cast a spell over its makers, so that they will land
in the fourth circle of hell, where they will be tortured until eternity
by the rancid muzak of Mostly Autumn.
This image says it all, we think...
(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may
have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
Do a combined Syd
BarrettUschi
Obermaier search on Google
and you get approximate 4600 results tying both celebrities together,
the first results being 'who's
dating who' (now called Famousfix) related finds. On the fifth
place, although this result will change from computer to computer is an
entry from the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, but not the regular
one.
Iggy's church can be found on various places on the interweb,
most of the time just to gather some dust. One branch office though, is
alive and kicking, and operates more or less independently from its
headquarters. It is on the microblogging
Tumblr platform, is aptly called The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit and
can be found at the following address: http://iggyinuit.tumblr.com.
The first image that is presented, also on the Famousfix
platform, is the one of Syd Barrett on a Formentera
beach, standing behind a woman who hides her nudity behind a red veil.
That picture is actually copyrighted and belongs to John
Davies who took the picture when he went to the island in summer 1969.
Update 2015 02 25: John Davies contacted us to get some facts
right.
The photo of the naked girl behind the red scarf was taken by Imo (Ian
Moore) and not by me although I used it in an article I wrote about
Cambridge, and credited Imo. Secondly, I went to Formentera first in
1963, with some friends from Cambridge, including Richard Eyre. We raved
about the island so much that other friends started going there in the
mid-sixties, including dear Syd. I still spend a lot of time there and
one or two of those Cambridge "hipsters" still live there.
The article from John Davies can be found at A Fleeting Glimpse: The
John Davies Collection. In another Church post (from 2012, time
flies!) we have highlighted the yearly trek from the Cambridge hipsters
to the island of Formentera: Formentera
Lady.
John Davies
John Davies was one of those Cambridge hipsters who, between 1963 and
1965:
...made the transformation from schoolboys to aspiring beatniks’,
swapping school uniforms for black polo necks and leather jackets,
listening to Miles Davis, riding Vespas and smoking dope purchased from
American GIs on the neighbouring airforce bases at Lakenheath and
Mildenhall.
He was, with Nigel
Lesmoir-Gordon, one of the people who mastered the Gaggia
espresso machine in the coffee-house El Patio and who (probably)
had his hand in the till when the boss wasn't around, as noted down by
Nick Sedgwick in his roman
à clefLight Blue with Bulges:
Lunch times, just keep the till open, ring up only half of the orders,
keep a check on the rest, then pocket the difference.
Nick Sedgwick
Nick Sedgwick, who sadly passed away in 2011, wrote a Pink Floyd 'on
tour' biography in the mid-seventies, but this was never published
because none of the characters came out very well, with the exception of
Roger Waters, who had commissioned the book. In August 2011 Waters
promised to respect his friend's dying wish and release the manuscript
as 'a simple PDF, a hardback version, and a super de-luxe illustrated
limited edition' (see: Immersion).
Transferring a typoscript to PDF literally takes a few minutes, but
nothing has moved three and a half years later and the Church fears that
this is just another case of the ongoing Waters vs Gilmour feud still
lurking behind their smiling faces and fat wallets.
Update March 2018: meanwhile the book was (finally) published in
2017, see In
The Pink hunt is open!
The Church has dedicated some space to the above picture before on the
post Formentera
Lady throwing the hypothesis around that the woman was one of Syd
Barrett's girlfriends nicknamed Sarah Sky. This explanation was
given to the Church by a Barrett fan who quoted her grandmother, but
communication was interrupted before we could get more into details.
According to Emo (Iain Moore) however, the girl was an American tourist
who was visiting Formentera for a day and had arrived at the house they
all rented, close to a nude beach.
Famous Groupies
In December 2013 The
Groupie Blog claimed the woman on the picture is German photo-model Uschi
Obermaier. This was followed by another post
in January 2014 where the author pretends Syd Barrett used to hit
Obermaier when he had hysteria attacks.
Obviously the Church wanted to get further into this as none of the
biographies mention any kind of romantic (nor aggressive) involvement
between the two of them. As the (anonymous) author of the groupies blog
was not contactable Uschi's autobiography High Times / Mein
Wildes Leben was bought and searched for any Syd Barrett entries.
Wild Thing
First things first: Obermaier's autobiography is a fine read, a three to
three and a half star rating out of five.
Born in 1946 Uschi escapes the German conservative square society in the
mid-sixties by clubbing at the Big Apple and PN in Munich
where she is rapidly adopted by the in-crowd because of: a) her good
looks, b) her dancing abilities and c) her free spirit attitude.
She meets with Reinhard
'Dicky' Tarrach from The
Rattles, who will have an international hit with The
Witch, and soon promotes to international bands like The
Kinks, whose Dave
Davies is such an arrogant male chauvinist pig he deserves a
separate entry. She is discovered by a photographer and a career as
photo-model is launched.
Around 1967 Neil
Landon from the hastily assembled The
Flower Pot Men has a more than casual interest and he invites her to
swinging London but she leaves as soon as she finds out about his
jealous streaks. Back in Germany she doesn't fit in everyday society any
more. She joins the alternative Amon
Düül commune, following drummer Peter Leopold, and she
makes it on a few of their jam-session albums as a maracas player.
Through Amon Düül she falls in love with Rainer
Langhans from Kommune
1 (K1). The Berlin communards live by a strict Marxism-Leninism
doctrine where everything belongs to the group and everyday family life
is forbidden. Individualism
is totally annihilated at a point that even the toilet has its doors
removed and telephone conversations need to be done with the speaker on.
Good-looking Rainer and cover-girl Uschi become a media-hyped
alternative couple, the German John and Yoko avant la lettre. She
is by then Germany's most wanted, and some say: best paid, photo-model
and as such not accepted by the community hardliners. Drinking cola or
smoking menthol cigarettes is considered counter-revolutionary.
In January 1969 Uschi hears that Jimi Hendrix is in town and they
meet for some quality time (short
clip on YouTube). He visits the commune which gives it another
popularity boost. Despite its utopian rules the communards have their
intrigues, jealousies and hidden agendas, it becomes a heroin den and
when one of the more extremist inhabitants hides a bomb in the house the
place is raided by the police. Later that year the commune disbands. (It
was also found out that the bomb was planted by an infiltrator, spying
for the police.)
The couple moves for a while into the Munich Frauenkommune
(women's commune), where their bourgeois manners and star allures aren't
appreciated either, but you won't read that in Obermaier's memories.
Movie director Katrin
Seybold:
Do you remember when Uschi Meier and Rainer Langhans stayed with us?
They really moved in at our place, like residents. And while the person
who happened to have money normally bought twenty yoghurts for all of
us, they bought the double for themselves and hid it in their room. They
were a narrow-minded philistine couple within our community. They were
not a bit generous. (Katrin Seybold and Mona Winter in Frauenkommune:
Angstlust der Männer. Translation by FA.)
Leaving the all-women group in 1970 the couple starts the High-Fish
(a pun on German Haifisch, or shark) commune, this time not a communist
but a hedonistic group where sex, drugs and rock'n roll are combined
into art happenings and/or sold as porn movies. The mansion may well
have been the German equivalent of London's 101 Cromwell Road, which was
some kind of LSD temple and the place where Syd Barrett used to live
with some 'heavy, loony, messianic acid freaks', to quote Pete
Jenner. (See also: An
innerview with Peter Jenner )
The Munich Incident
In March 1970 the High-Fish commune was the centre of a rock'n roll
tragedy if we may believe some accounts. In vintage Fleetwood
Mac circles the event is better known as the Munich Incident.
Ultimate Classic Rock:
“It was a hippie commune sort of thing,” said Fleetwood Mac guitarist
Jeremy Spencer. “We arrived there, and [road manager] Dennis Keane comes
up to me shaking and says, “It’s so weird, don’t go down there. Pete
[Green] is weirding out big time and the vibes are just horrible.” Green
was already set to leave the band, but this was, as [Mick] Fleetwood put
it, “the final nail in the coffin.” Friends say Green was never the same
after the Munich incident. (Taken from: 38
Years Ago: Fleetwood Mac Founder Peter Green Arrested for Pulling
Shotgun on His Accountant.)
It's true that we, or more accurately, Pete [Green] was met at Munich
airport by a very beautiful girl [Uschi Obermaier] and a strange guy in
a black cape [Rainer Langhans]. Their focus was definitely Pete for some
reason. The rest of us didn't get it, but we discussed the weird vibes.
We were invited to their mansion in the Munich forest that night. Pete
was already jamming down in the basement (…) when I arrived with Mick
[Fleetwood]. Dennis Keane [road manager] met us in the driveway, ashen
faced and freaking out over the bad vibes and how weird Pete was going.
I don't think Dennis was stoned, he just wanted to get out. (…) Anyway
the house (more like a mansion) was a rich hippy crash pad. And it was
spooky. There was some weird stuff going on in the different rooms.
(Taken from: The
Munich accident.)
Road manager Dennis Keane maintains they were spiked:
When we went inside there was a party of about 20 people sat around, we
were offered a glass of wine, and the next thing I knew all hell broke
loose in my head - we'd been drugged. Nobody had offered us any tablets;
they just went and spiked us. (Taken from: Celmins, Martin: Peter
Green: The Authorised Biography, Sanctuary, 2003)
Over the years the Munich Incident may have been exaggerated and Rainer
Langhans, in his (free) autobiography, tries to bring the incident back
to its true proportions:
After the performance of Fleetwood Mac in Munich, at the Deutsche
Museum, the band went to the hotel. Peter Green came along with us, with
the High-Fish people. (...) I quickly befriended him but he did not talk
much. We were both, in a way, soul mates. A soft, vulnerable and loving
man. Uschi had no special connection with him. She did not find him
physically attractive. He was too hairy, she said, and also the music of
Fleetwood Mac was too soft and not 'rocky' enough, while I found it very
beautiful. We spent the night together with him, tripping, jamming and
floating through the rooms on LSD. (...)
We met him
twice in London in the next couple of weeks. It was him who brought us
in contact with the Stones and Uschi was able to fulfill her dream of
finally starting an affair with Jagger. With Fleetwood Mac everything
seemed to be fine, but then Peter Green suddenly dropped out of the
band. We heard he was so disgusted with the music business that he no
longer wanted to be there. Much later the band put the responsibility on
the night he was with us in Munich and claimed his trip with us had
completely changed him. (Translated from German to English by FA.)
Peter
Green's decline and retreat from the music industry is often
compared to Syd Barrett's 1967 breakdown and although his descend into
madness can't be linked to one single event, just as in the Barrett
case, the gargantuan trip at the High-Fish community may have pushed him
closer to the edge.
Conveniently Uschi Obermaier's excellent memory suddenly fails her when
it comes to the Munich Incident. There is not a single word about it in
her autobiography, but the Frauenkommune testimony from above already
shows she can be rather discrete if she wants to.
Reeperbahn Prince
With their days of Marxist collectivism gone, she and Langhans are
thinking of organising a German Woodstock festival. Peter Green does
what is asked of him and a few days later the couple is standing in a
London studio where Mick Jagger is working on Sticky Fingers. It is
satisfaction at first sight and a treat for the paparazzi.
But German Woodstock never happens, the relation with Rainer Langhans
comes to an end and Uschi, now an international photo-model, jumps back
into the Munich nightlife, replacing the diet of Champagne and Quaaludes
with the trendier heroin. In Hamburg she meets Dieter
Bockhorn, who is officially an eccentric Reeperbahn strip-club
owner and they start a turbulent relationship. When the Rolling Stones
are in Germany for some recordings she gradually replaces Mick Jagger
for Keith Richards, following them on a European tour and joining them
in the USA. Bockhorn is not amused.
From then on she will have a bizarre love triangle: everyday life with
Dieter and meeting Keith whenever his touring schedule allows him. She
will always have a soft spot for Richards: “The most honourable bad boy
I knew – and I knew some.”
In the mid-seventies Obermaier and Bockhorn, who has made the move to
heroin as well, follow the hippie trail to Asia in a converted bus. It
will be a trip through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India that takes
622 days, 55141 kilometres with many weird, unbelievable adventures and
a few narrow escapes. German press, as always, is interested in the
adventures of Germany's baddest Kultpaar (cult couple) and they
are regularly interviewed and photographed 'on the road'.
Back in Hamburg Uschi obviously returns to modelling but the couple
fails to adapt to the western world and their relationship suffers
gravely. She remarks that the hippie days are over and that punks have
taken over the street. Bockhorn's business has suffered from the 20
months they were abroad and he struggles with monetary, legal and not
quite so legal problems. They make plans to leave for America as soon as
they can afford to leave.
In November 1980 they arrive in the USA where they will do a Kerouac,
heroine free after an obliged detox boat journey. In summer they roam
the continent and for three consecutive winters they stay in an
alternative hippies and bikers camp in Baja
California (Mexico). It is in Cabo
San Lucas that Keith Richards arrives one day, carrying a guitar
under the arm and giving a one man campfire gig on the beach, much to
the amazement of the stoned onlookers. In the third year money has run
out and the dharma bum life, with loads of alcohol, 'grass' and
promiscuity, weighs heavily on both of them. On the last day of 1983 a
drunk Dieter Bockhorn crashes his motorcycle on a truck ending his wild
life.
Biography
For a while a depressed Uschi Obermaier feels that she has achieved
nothing in her life and that she only got there through her pretty face.
One of her pastimes is scrimshaw and she starts designing jewellery that
she sells through the exclusive Maxfield
store in Los Angeles, where Madonna and Jack Nicholson buy their
trinkets. While she is certainly not an airhead and may have talent as
an artist it can't be denied that her career is a case of, what the
Germans amusingly describe as, Hurenglück.
On top of that the Krauts simply can't have enough of her. The story of
her life as a groupie, a junkie, a starlet, her relations with a
communist rebel, some Rolling Stones and a Reeperbahn crook who thought
he was the Hamburg equivalent of Ronnie
Kray make her autobiography Mein Wildes Leben (literally: my
wild life) a page-turning bestseller.
It is followed by a biopic Das
Wilde Leben, a home-country hit, but not abroad where it is
baptised Eight
Miles High. Reviews vary, but in our opinion it is a pretty average
movie, with uneven and often caricatural scenes (check the Mick vs Keith scene
for a ROTFL)
and frankly Natalia
Avelon's gorgeous cleavage has more depth than the script.
Back To Barrett
But to finally get back to the initial subject of this post, because in
fine Church tradition we seem to have gone astray for a while.
Did Uschi Obermaier have a love-interest in Syd Barrett? Did they
meet at Formentera? Did he hit her when he had hysteria attacks?
No. No. No.
We're afraid the answer is a triple no.
Doesn't Mein Wildes Lebens mention Syd Barrett at all?
Yes, his name is dropped once. He is mentioned in a comparison between
Swinging London and 'its psychedelic music scene from early Pink Floyd
with Syd Barrett' and the grey, conservative atmosphere in Germany where
girls in miniskirts were insulted on the street.
Could Uschi have met Syd Barrett in Germany?
No. Vintage Pink Floyd, with Barrett in the band, never played Germany.
A gig for the TV show Music For Young People in Hamburg, on the first
and second of August 1967 was cancelled.
How about Syd hitting her?
The Barrett - Obermaier hysteria attack rumour is probably a mix-up from
Syd's alleged violence towards his girlfriends and the tumultuous
relationship between Obermaier and Bockhorn, who once pointed a gun at
her and pulled the trigger (luckily the weapon jammed).
So how about Uschi Obermaier hiding her precious body behind a red
veil on Formentera in the summer of 1969?
She writes that she visited Ibiza (the island next to Formentera) on the
day Mick Jagger married Bianca, so that places the event in May 1971,
nearly two years after Syd's Formentera picture. When Barrett was
strolling on the beach Uschi was either at K1 in Berlin or at the
Frauenkommune in Munich.
Well, I'm still not convinced until Uschi Obermaier herself tells us
it never happened.
Why didn't you ask before, because we did. We managed to pass Uschi
Obermaier the question through a mutual contact and we even got an
answer back. Uschi Obermaier on the first of February 2015:
They are right, this is NOT me, they researched right. I was at this
time either in Berlin or back in Munich.
Case closed then. Unless Sarah Sky wants to come forward, obviously.
Many thanks to: Bianca Corrodi, John Davies, Little Queenies, Nina,
Uschi Obermaier, Jenny Spires. This is, more or less, an update of a
previous article that can be found here: Formentera
Lady.
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 28, 83. Langhans,
Rainer: Ich Bin's, pdf
version, 2008, p 39. Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink
Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p. 38. Povey, Glenn: Echoes,
the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 67. Sedgwick,
Nick: Light Blue With Bulges, Fourth estate, London, 1989, p. 37.
The following is a 'longread' about the blues musicians who gave Pink
Floyd its name. Warning: inappropriate language is used
throughout.
TL;DR: Syd Barrett did not have Pink Anderson and/or Floyd
Council records, as they were extremely rare. Those two blues
musicians were named on the liner notes of a popular Blind Boy Fuller
compilation though. It wasn't Syd who distilled the name 'Pink Floyd'
from that record, but Stephen Pyle, one of his friends.
Pink
Floyd and Syd
Barrett fans have a pretty rough idea how the band acquired its
name, although the exact story is probably less known and only interests
Roger Keith Barrett anoraks anyway. In their enthusiasm, some fans even
share pictures of the Pink Floyd name-givers on the dozens of, mostly
obsolete and highly repetitive, Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Facebook fan
groups, in their continuous race to be bigger than the others.
Here they are: Georgia blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Council,
whose records were in the proud possession of a certain Cambridge boy.
Only, the person at the right is not Floyd Council, but Blind
Boy Fuller (and they are not from Georgia either). We'll explain
later how Blind Boy Fuller gets into the picture.
Knowing how a blues singer from the beginning of the past century looked
like is one thing, knowing how he sounded often seems even more of a
gargantuan task. And even the world's best music magazine wasn't so sure
either.
Different tunes
The above YouTube movie allegedly has the Pink Anderson song C.C. and
O Blues, followed by the Floyd Council track If You Don't Give Me
What I Want. Only what you hear is not always what you get.
C.C. and O Blues
The vocals on C.C. And O Blues are from Simmie
Dooley, not Pink
Anderson. Dooley was a country blues street singer who lived in Spartanburg,
South Carolina and who is mostly remembered as Anderson's musical mentor.
In the beginning of the past century Spartanburg's black district was
named the politically incorrect Niggertown, by Negroes and whites alike.
The black district was a spirited place, in all possible interpretations
of the word, and not always safe to roam. Ira
Tucker, lead singer of The
Dixie Hummingbirds, remembers:
Anywhere you would go could be risky. Those guys in Spartanburg, they
didn't take any tea for the fever. They would fight to the end!
As a black person, living in Spartanburg, one had to face thousands of
indignities. The racist police was generally showing disrespect:
Nigger, you have to say 'mister' to me.
The black population of Spartanburg reacted, unsurprisingly, as expected.
The white cops, when they would get ready to arrest a black man, it
would take three or four of them. If they came into a neighbourhood to
arrest somebody for nothing, black people would fight back.
Not that a lot has changed a century later, with the exception that the
n-word is now considered inopportune. USA police still can insult, kick
and shoot unarmed black people, but as long as they don't call them
N----- it's all passing by without consequences.
Trotting Sally
The black district of Spartanburg also offered good times and music was
always around. Ira Tucker's grandfather 'Uncle Ed' was a musician who
played a mean accordion and who sang in the local church choir.
Another character was Trotting
Sally, real name: George Mullins. Born a slave in 1856, he was freed
at the age of 9 and became a familiar street musician with his fiddle
'Rosalie'. He was known for his wild antics and crazy animal imitations.
His behaviour was so eccentric that people doubted his mental stability.
He was – literally - the stuff legends are made of. It was rumoured that
Millins had superhuman strength, that he could outrun a train, hence the
nickname Trotting Sally, and these heroic deeds were the subject
of several late 19th-century folk-tales. When he died, in 1931, he was
remembered in several newspaper articles. Although he was captured on
film, no sound recordings of him exist. Ira Tucker:
He was an excellent violinist. Nothing but strings and his fingers. He
had that violin almost sounding like it was talking. If you said “Good
Morning”, he would make that violin say, “G-o-o-o-d M-o-o-o-rning”.
Simmie Dooley
Another street musician who not only impressed Ira Tucker, but Blind
Gary Davis as well, was an old man who sang and played the guitar:
Blind Simmie.
Simmie Dooley (1881-1961) may have played his favourite spot in
Spartanburg's 'Short Wolford' when he met young lad Pink Anderson, an
entertainer in a travelling medicine show who wanted to learn the
guitar. They would go off in the woods to practice, usually with a
bottle of corn whiskey 'to help the throats'. Simmie's educational
system consisted of hitting Pink's hands with a switch until he got the
chords right.
In search of Simmie
Anderson was not only Dooley's sideman, but also his eyes. It was
practically impossible for a blind man to travel but with Pink he could
go to the small towns around Spartanburg, like Woodroff and Roebuck, to
play on country picnics and parties. They often performed together and
in April 1928 they recorded four
tracks for Columbia Records in Atlanta. These two 10 inch 78RPM
records were issued under the name Pink Anderson and Simmie Dooley and
have the duo at their finest. The musical bond between both was so
strong that Pink Anderson refused to record without his teacher, which
could have made his life much easier. (Apparently the record company
didn't like Simmie's distinctive voice.)
C.C. & O Blues, referring to the Carolina,
Clinchfield and Ohio Railway that ran through Spartanburg, is a bit
carelessly attributed to Pink Anderson on a Mojo cover disk of October
2007 (issue 167): In
Search Of Syd. Simmie Dooley, who is the main performer, is only
mentioned in the liner notes, but not on the front nor backside
track-listing. It is one of those mysteries why exactly this track was
chosen for the compilation. From that same 1928 session Mojo could have,
for instance, picked Papa's
Bout To Get Mad where Pink Anderson is the lead instead of Simmie
Dooley. All in all there are about 3 dozen Pink Anderson songs but Mojo
resolutely went for about the only track in his entire career where he
can't be heard at all.
If You Don't Give Me What I Want
The second song on the YouTube movie from above is If You Don't Give Me
What I Want. It can be found on the same Mojo compilation and there it
is somewhat lavishly attributed to Blind
Boy Fuller and Floyd
Council. It certainly is a Blind Boy Fuller song, taken from a
session in February 1937 with accompanying musicians Floyd Council (on
guitar) and George Washington (on washboard), using the pseudonyms
Dipper Boy Council and Bull City Red.
Mojo stretched the line by adding Floyd Council's name, making us wonder
why they forgot the third musician. The YouTube uploader even went a
step further by omitting Blind Boy Fuller from his own record, thus
giving the title a self-explanatory extra dimension.
Although Floyd Council solo tracks are harder to find than those of Pink
Anderson, they do exist and 6 of those have survived into the
twenty-first century.
Ufonauts
If you are already confused by now, we can only promise it will get
worse from now on. Who are these Pink and Floyd character everyone is
talking about?
Syd Barrett at first tried to explain that the name Pink Floyd had come
to him in a vision or by a passing flying saucer while he was meditating
on a leyline, but the truth is somewhat less exotic. In a Swedish
interview from September 1967, Barrett explained:
The name Pink Floyd comes from two blues singers from Georgia, USA –
Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
Basically this story kept repeating itself from article (for instance: Nick
Kent, 1974) to article, from year to year, from biography to
biography, without much checking of the journalists involved, although
some did have the guts to add the odd detail here and there. But all in
all it would take more than three decades to get to the truth.
In the Visual Documentary (aka the Pink Floyd bible) by Barry
Miles (1980) Anderson and Council are still described as Georgia
blues-men who were in Syd's record collection. It may come as blasphemy
for vintage Floyd fans but demi-god Syd Barrett actually made an error
as these two musicians stayed in the Carolinas for most of their lives. Nicholas
Schaffner (1991) managed to add the years of birth and death of
these obscure blues musicians, but also Mike Watkinson and Pete Anderson
in their Crazy Diamond biography state that Syd 'had a couple of records
by two grizzled Georgia blues-men'. Same for the lavishly illustrated,
but for the rest forgettable, Learning To Fly biography by Chris
Welch (1994) and a few other publications...
In 1988 though, in the first release of Days in the Life, Jonathon
Green quotes Peter Jenner:
The name came from a sleeve note which one of them had read, which
referred to Pink somebody or other, and Floyd somebody or other, two old
blues guys, and they just thought that 'The Pink Floyd' was a nice
combination, and they called it the Pink Floyd Sound.
Information doesn't always gets transferred through the appropriate
channels and the booklet of the Crazy
Diamond CD-box, that appeared 8 years later, still alleged that:
Barrett, Waters, Wright, and Mason reconvened as The Pink Floyd Sound, a
name Syd had coined from an album by Georgia blues musicians Pink
Anderson and Floyd Council.
(Barrett's record company and/or management have a history of making
silly mistakes, see Dark
Blog or Cut
the Cake.)
All it needed to straight things out was to go to a local library (this
was pre-WWW-days, remember) and look up these names in a blues
encyclopedia, like yours truly did, a very long time ago. Kiloh Smith's
adagio that 'Syd Barrett fans are, basically, really, really lazy people
unless it comes to fighting amongst themselves on some message board'
can also be expanded to rock journalists.
Pink Anderson
Although never of the grandeur of B.B. King or Muddy Waters Pink
Anderson isn’t really that obscure and the perfect example for someone
who likes to brag about his (or her) Piedmont
blues knowledge.
Pink Anderson was born in Lawrence,
South Carolina, in February 1900, and was raised in Spartanburg where he
would stay his entire life. He first went on the road at age fourteen,
employed by Dr. Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company, singing and dancing
medicine show tunes. When the show was not travelling between Virginia
and southern Georgia, with occasional trips into Alabama and Tennessee,
Pink was working as a handyman in the Spartanburg storehouse where W.R.
Kerr kept his trucks and stage equipment. He would stay with the troupe
until Dr. Kerr retired in 1945 and never considered himself a blues
singer, but a medicine show entertainer.
In 1916 Pink met Simmie Dooley, a blind blues street-singer, living in
the same town. When Pink wasn’t out selling magic potions, he and Simmie
played at picnics and parties in small towns around Spartanburg. They
cut a few singles together in April 1928, but Anderson refused to record
without Dooley (until Simmie was too old to perform). In February 1950
he was recorded by singer, folklorist and music-archivist Paul
Clayton, but the tapes wouldn't be released for another decade.
Samuel Charters
There was a kind of Pink Anderson revival in the early sixties, when he
was tracked down by blues historian Samuel
Charters who recorded him and brought out three albums spanning
Pink's career as a Carolina blues man (volume 1), a medicine show
entertainer (volume 2) and a ballad & folksinger (volume 3), otherwise
Pink Anderson would've stayed a mere footnote in blues history, just
like his tutor Simmie Dooley. These three albums still sell today,
obviously aided by the Floydian connection, and they are of an excellent
'vintage folk & blues' quality. (Samuel Charters passed away in March
2015, aged 85: obituary.)
It is not unimaginable that some people in the Cambridge blues & beatnik
circles were aware of these compilations, although they must have been
rare. Floyd Council's name, however, can't be found on any of these
records. Anderson's repertoire contained several Blind Boy Fuller songs,
but they never met. Anderson died in Spartanburg in 1974, perhaps
unaware of the fact that one of the greatest shows on earth was named
after him.
Floyd Council
Floyd Council is a slightly different matter. Blues scholars and
historians know him as a side-man on about a dozen of Blind Boy Fuller
records and he only became a kind of celebrity because of the Floyd
segment. His solo songs have been included on several blues
compilations, because of the Pink Floyd link alone, for instance on the
Century of the Blues 4-CD set (see picture above) where he comes up,
right after... Pink Anderson.
Floyd Council was born in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina in September 1911 and began working with
legendary blues artist Blind Boy Fuller in the 1930’s. Though he is
mainly known for backing Fuller, he also worked with Sonny
Terry and cut some solo tracks as well. A few sources tell he may
have recorded enough tracks for three albums, but only six of those have
survived. The well-informed Wirz
blues discography only found one lost 1937 two-tracks session.
In a (fruitless) effort to become famous he gigged and recorded as
'Dipper Boy Council', bearing the epitheton ornans 'Blind Boy
Fuller's Buddy' (1937). According to the New Dictionary of American
Slang, edited by Robert L. Chapman (1986), dipper refers to dippermouth,
a person with a large mouth. The term showed up in Dippermouth
Blues, recorded by King
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in 1923 with a 21-years old Louis
Armstrong in the band, whose nickname happened to be just that, for
obvious reasons.
Devil in disguise
Another stage name for Council was the 'Devil's Daddy-in-Law' (1938),
probably to cash in on the popularity of Peetie
Wheatstraw who was known as the 'Devil’s Son-in-Law' and whose songs
often referred to the hoodoo tradition, root doctor and crossroads
legends in blues.
"If black music is the father of rock, voodoo is its grandfather" write Baigent
and Leigh
in their overview
of the occult through the ages. It is not known if Council was a
follower of Vodu, but like most Negroes he must have been aware of the
pagan undercurrent in his society, that was politically, culturally and
socially segregated from the white highbrow class.
Probably his nicknames had been chosen by his white and highbrow class
manager J.B.
Long, a Maecenas for some and a thief for others, who also had Blind
Boy Fuller in his stable and who employed Floyd Council on a farm he
owned.
Floyd passed away in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on May 9, 1976. He is
buried in an unmarked
grave somewhere at White Oak A.M.E. Zion Cemetery of Sanford.
Carolina Blues
The first widely available Floyd Council compilation Carolina Blues
(1936-1950) was released in 1987, a tad too late to influence Syd
Barrett in his search for a name for his band. Let it be clear that in
the early sixties it was close to impossible, for a Cambridge youngster,
to find a Floyd Council record in the UK, unless you happened to be a
very lucky and rich 78-RPM gramophone collector. We seriously doubt that
anyone would lend any of these singles to a bunch of teenagers who would
scratch the surfaces on their Dansette portable record players.
So that is why it was impossible for Syd Barrett to have a Floyd
Council record in his collection, as some biographers have written.
Pre-War Blues
Little by little the Pink Floyd biographies had to alter the story, but
it lasted until 2005 before Bryan Sinclair asked the following question
to a Yahoo
group of pre-war blues collectors:
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 08:58:47 -0500 To:
pre-war-blues@yahoogroups.com From: Bryan Sinclair Subject: Pink
Anderson / Floyd Council
I am interested in some background info on the origin of the band name
"Pink Floyd." It is my understanding that Syd Barrett came up with this
hybrid by combining the first names of Carolina bluesmen Pink
Anderson and Floyd Council. Bastin provides ample info with
respect to dates and locales for both, but how did the two names become
associated with one another, at least in the mind of Barrett?
Bryan Sinclair Asheville, NC
It took less than a day before Bryan Sinclair has an answer. David Moore
from Bristol remembered the names from a record he had in his collection:
To: <pre-war-blues@yahoogroups.com> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005
15:47:51 -0000 From: "Dave Moore" Subject: Re:
[pre-war-blues] Pink Anderson / Floyd Council
From an LP apparently in the possession of Syd Barrett: Blind Boy
Fuller, Country Blues 1935-1940, issued on Philips BBL-7512, c. 1962.
The sleeve notes were by Paul Oliver, and include the following: "Curley
Weaver and Fred McMullen, Georgia-born but more frequently to be found
in Kentucky or Tennessee, Pink Anderson or Floyd Council-- these were a few amongst the many blues singers that were to be
heard in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the
streams through the wooded valleys."
Dave Moore Bristol, UK
Enigma
So there we have it. All it took to find the answer was, oddly enough,
to ask someone who knew, a thing nobody had ever thought of doing for 35
years. All we needed to do, was to keep on talking.
The rest is history and has been repeated in decent Pink Floyd
biographies ever since. So it is a crying shame that Floyd über-geek
Glenn Povey, in his encyclopedic study Echoes from 2007 still writes:
It [Pink Floyd] is the amalgamation of the first names of two old
Carolina bluesmen whose work was very familiar to him [Syd Barrett].
Not... a... fucking... chance.
Update July 2017:...and yet, official Pink Floyd sources still
don't grasp this. The 2017 catalogue for the Pink Floyd Their Mortal
remains exhibition states at page 82 that the band was - and we quote -
'named after two of Syd Barrett's favourite blues artists'.
Blind Boy Fuller
Fulton Allen was born in July 1907 in Wadesboro,
North-Carolina and learned to play the blues from the people around him.
In his mid-teens he started to lose his eyesight from a maltreated
disease at birth and not from washing his face with poisoned water,
given to him by a jealous woman, as has been put forward by Paul
Oliver.
What was a hobby at first, now became his trade, because blind Negroes
didn't have many job opportunities in the thirties. Allen started
busking in the streets of Durham
and playing gigs with Floyd Council (aka Dipper Boy Council), Saunders
Terrell (aka Sonny Terry) , George Washington (aka Bull
City Red) and Reverend Gary Davis.
In 1935 he was discovered by record store owner and music promoter James
Baxter Long who became manager of the lot. Re-baptised as Blind Boy
Fuller he was paid about 200$ per 12 song session, not a bad deal in
those days, unless you would suddenly start selling hundreds of
thousands of records. And that was exactly what happened.
In five years time Blind Boy cut 139 sides, in 11 sessions taking
approximately 24 days, but there would be no royalties going Fuller's
way. Long would later explain that, as a rookie, he didn't understand
the concept of copyrights. It is true that before 1938 Fuller's records
were not credited to any author, thus (theoretically) flushing a lot of
money down the drain. After April 1938 Long started putting his own name
on the copyright papers when he noted down Fuller's lyrics, claiming he
did this innocently and with no intent to rip Fuller.
Opinions about J.B. Long differ. As a patron of the arts he provided
housing and jobs for his artists, but of course that was also a way to
have them chained for life to his agency. Gary Davis and Blind Boy
Fuller called him a thief, although Sonny Terry was slightly more
diplomatic:
In the beginning he took all the money, but we didn't care because it
started our careers.
Brownie
McGhee, however, never had a bad thing to say about his manager.
The Decca Tapes
Blind Boy Fuller once tried to moonlight at Decca, but these records
were rapidly pulled from the market after a complaint from his manager,
who wasn't apparently such an innocent rookie after all when somebody
tried to grab his artists.
James Baxter maintained he constantly provided Fuller with money,
clothes, food, fuel 'and other necessities' but the singer and his wife
applied several times for welfare, neglecting to mention that they
already had an income from recording sessions.
The blind aid bureaucracy didn't realise that Fulton Allen and Blind Boy
Fuller were the same person and they gave him a monthly allowance.
Unfortunately Fuller gave his secret away when he complained to social
services that his manager was not giving him the royalties he was
entitled to, but the only advice they could give him was to wait until
the contract ended and not to sign another one.
By 1939, suffering from alcohol related stomach ulcers, kidney troubles
and probably a touch of syphilis, Fuller impatiently waited to be
released from his contract and from jail, as he had shot his wife in the
leg, quite an accomplishment for a blind man and a sign that he had more
than money problems alone.
The Last Session
J.B. Long had the last laugh when he told Blind Boy Fuller he was still
under contract with the American Recording Company. Ironically it was
James Baxter who drove Blind Boy, Sonny Terry, Bull City Red and the
Reverend Gary Davis to Memphis for another recording session. This time
Fuller only received part of his session money, because he was already
greatly in debt with his ex-manager. On top of that the Blind Assistance
administration had finally found out that Fulton Allen was the same man
as Blind Boy Fuller. From his ex-manager they learned that he earned
about three times as much as the average household, which was still
ridiculously low given the records he sold. They (logically) terminated
the welfare checks.
The problem was that Fulton didn't spread his session money over several
months but that it would be invariably gone by the next. James Baxter
Long proposed to give Fuller a monthly salary instead of a session
lump-sum, and even a house rent-free, but a stubborn Blind Boy refused,
perhaps because it would have meant giving his freedom away and signing
a new contract with the music promoter.
For reasons that have never been properly disclosed, but it might have
been a rough life of sex and drugs and rural blues, Fulton Allen's
health rapidly declined and he died in February 1941, at only 33 years
of age.
Classic Jazz Masters
In his book 'How Britain Got The Blues', R.F. Schwartz notes that:
...most critics agreed that the great blues of the past would never be
reissued [in the fifties, FA], but some collectors were committed to
making this repertoire accessible.
For the smart understander: illegally. History repeats itself, ad
infinitum.
At first many jazz and blues reissues were bootlegs, made by collectors
for collectors and taken from the original 78-RPM records. As the
musicians had been paid flat fees anyway, and seldom received royalties,
no harm was done, although the record labels obviously had different
opinions.
With a growing demand for vintage blues the major labels finally
understood that there was a market and that the costs for producing
these albums was minimal. Philips began its Classic Jazz Masters
Series in 1962 with: Blind Boy Fuller 1935-1940 Country Blues
(BBL-7512), Bessie
Smith 1923-1924 Bessie's Blues (BBL-7513), followed by: Robert
Johnson 1936-37 (BBL-7539).
That last one was almost immediately deleted for legal reasons
(apparently even record companies have difficulties sorting copyrights
out) but so many copies had already been sold to blues-hungry teenagers
that a whole generation was inspired to start their own bands. British
blues boom was a fact.
On his first trip to England, in November 1962, Bob Dylan bought two
albums he brought back to the States. The first one was Blues Fell This
Morning, a Southern Blues compilation, that accompanied Paul Oliver's
book with the same name. The second was the Philips Blind Boy Fuller
Country Blues album. (A picture of that album, with Bob Dylan's
signature, can be found on Recordmecca: Bob
Dylan's Muse: Suze Rotolo, 1943-2011.)
Blues was a tidal wave that couldn't be stopped. 1965 saw a British tour
of Reverend Gary Davis and his old mates Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry
headlined the Cambridge Folk Festival on the 31st of July.
Blues In Cambridge
That the blues was also popular in Cambridge was proved by bands as The
Hollerin' Blues, named after the 1929 Charley
Patton song, Screamin'
and Hollerin' the Blues. Incidentally, Blind Boy Fuller's Piccolo
Rag, that is present on the 1962 Country Blues compilation, has the
lyrics:
Said, when I'm on the corner hollerin'. "Whoa! Haw! Gee!" My
gal's uptown hollerin'. "Who wants me?"
As their only way of communication, slaves or black farm workers would
holler to each other across the fields. Sometimes these hollers would be
wordless, sometimes they would form sentences and grow into songs that
were sung in call and response. Spirituals, work songs and hollers
influenced and structured early blues.
Back To The Bone
The line-up of this 1962/63 rhythm & blues band was Barney Barnes
(piano, harmonica and vocals), Alan Sizer (guitar), Pete Glass
(harmonica) and Stephen Pyle (drums). Rado 'Bob' Klose and Syd Barrett
joined them at least once at the Dolphin Club in Coronation Street, but
he was never a band member. According to Gian Palacios Barrett also sat
in on several jam sessions, mainly because he showed a certain interest
in Juliet Mitchell who lived in the house where the band rehearsed.
Women were the reason why the band cut itself loose from their old
management and they reincarnated as Those Without with Warren
Dosanjh as their new manager. (See also Antonio Jesús interview: Warren
Dosanjh, Syd Barrett's first manager.) Stephen Pyle remembers in The
Music Scene Of 1960s Cambridge that he actually suggested Pink
Floyd as the band's new name, but this was rejected by the others.
Which one's Pink?
It means that the Philips Blind Boy Fuller Country Blues album was well
known by the Hollerin' Blues mob, including Syd Barrett, who joined
Those Without for about a dozen of of gigs. It could also mean that the
Pink Floyd name, contrary to general belief, was not thought up by Syd
and that it might have been an incidental joke. Over the last few years
though, Stephen Pyle changed this story a bit, claiming that he and Syd
used to invent band names all the time, just for fun. 'Pink Floyd' as
such never was a contestant to rename The Hollerin' Blues. Not that it
really matters, but we asked Stephen Pyle anyway:
I am afraid time has taken is toll on my memory. But Syd and I used
to invent band names when Those Without were already in existence, as to
who's album it was I think it was mine. It was Dave Gilmour who
claimed that I was the source, and he must have got that from Syd.
Country Blues: a review
The 1962 Philips album Country Blues, Blind Boy Fuller 1935-1940 is a
wayward compilation, containing 16 tracks, ranging from the obvious to
the less than obvious. It contains tracks from 10 different sessions,
recorded over 12 days, starting with the first session that made Fuller
a star and ending with the last one he would ever do. Intriguingly - for
Pink Floyd anoraks - is that none of the tracks have Floyd Council on
them, but George Washington (aka Bull City Red) and Sonny Terry can be
found on several songs. So the record that gave the Pink Floyd name away
actually doesn't have Pink Anderson, nor Floyd Council on it.
Why don't you listen to the Country Blues album while reading this
review?
A Spotify playlist (login needed) for the same album can be found here: Country
Blues. Throughout the review many YouTube and Wikipedia links will
be given, checking them out will take many hours of your life. A Blind
Boy Fuller gallery with hi-res images of the record, its cover and the
liner notes has been uploaded: Blind
Boy Fuller.
Blind Boy Fuller is generally cited as the originator of the terms 'keep
on truckin' (in Truckin'
My Blues Away, not on this compilation) and 'get
your yas yas out' (not included either). Several of his songs belong
to the hokum genre - humoristic blues with double entendres and sexual
innuendos – or bawdy blues. His What’s
That Smell Like Fish, Mama (not included) as being one of the most
risqué ever.
There's a bit of playful innuendo in Truckin' Little Baby with the line:
she got good jelly but she's stingy with me.
Jelly is a culinary metaphor for female attractiveness and/or sexuality.
Imagine this tune with an electric guitar, add some bass and a drum and
there you have it: rock'n roll.
A big legged woman is just another way of saying that she is sexually
attractive and with 'gets my pay' Fuller is implying he wants to give
her more than his monthly salary alone, but you probably already had
figured that out.
I
Want Some Of Your Pie obviously is an example of a risqué blues,
without really being too smutty, unless we semantically dig deeper.
Officially the song goes like this:
Says, I'm not jokin' an' I'm gonna tell you no lie, I want to eat
your custard pie.
But most hear something else:
Says, I'm not jokin' an' I'm gonna tell you no lie, I want to eat
your custy pie.
In a mighty interesting online essay that has unfortunately disappeared
from the web at the end of 2014 'The use of food as a sexual metaphor in
the blues' (Elise Israd) it is suggested that the use of code words for
romantic and sexual activity may have come out of fear and oppression.
Plantation owners were not amused that their (male) slaves would discuss
sex in public and thus they used innocent synonyms for the yummy things
they wanted to describe.
When it came to producing and selling blues records there was as well
the matter of censorship. As often in these cases the record companies
had a double standard, calling the naughty bits by their proper name was
considered obscene and legally forbidden, but they didn't see any harm
in selling songs about sugar plums, fish and custy, custard, crusty or
cushdy pies.
I Want Some Of Your Pie (1939) is one of those songs that has different
incarnations. It can be found as Custard
Pie (1947) by Sonny Terry and as Custard
Pie Blues (1962) by Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Buddy
Moss and Pinewood
Tom recorded an early version, with slightly other lyrics, as You
Got To Give Me Some Of It in 1935, 4 years before Blind Boy Fuller.
It might not come to you as a surprise that Led Zeppelin's 1975 album Physical
Graffiti starts with a track called Custard
Pie, what made one fan seriously wonder if Sonny Terry covered it
retroactively from the dark angel that is Robert Plant.
Recorded: July 12, 1939, with Sonny Terry (harmonica) & Bull City Red
(washboard). Sound
and Lyrics Source(s):
Custard
Pie
Cat Man Blues
The next three songs all have an animal theme and in these cases animals
are used as an allegory for a situation man is not really happy with.
Cat
Man Blues is the story of a man who returns home, hears a noise in
another room and is told by his wife it is nothing but the cat.
Went home last night, heard a noise, I asked my wife what was that? Said
man don't be so suspicious, that ain't nothin' but a cat. Lord I
travelled this world all over mama, takin' all kinds of chance. But
I never come home before, seein' a cat wearin' a pair of pants!
While the words are funny, the situation isn't and the protagonist
surely doesn't appreciate that the cat man is stealing his cream away.
Recorded: April 29, 1936, (recorded twice that day, actually). Sound
(take1), Sound
(take 2) and Lyrics
Been Your Dog
Been
Your Dog has a man complaining how badly treated he is by his wife.
In Untrue
Blues, not on this record, Fuller describes it as follows:
Now you doggin' me mama, ain't did a thing to you. And you keep on
doggin' no telling what I'll do. Now you dog me every morning, give
me the devil late at night. Just the way you doggin' me, I ain't
goin' treat you right.
Been Your Dog plays with the same subject:
I've been your dog mama ever since I've been your man...
Fuller complains how he has to work hard all day, only to come and find
a drunk wife in bed and ponders if he should leave her and make room for
another man.
Recorded: February 10, 1937. Sound,
but no Lyrics found.
Hungry Calf Blues
Hungry
Calf Blues is much more funny and risqué, although it has again the
undertone of a man who is cheated on and who does his best to win his
woman back. The song, so tell the experts, is a variation of Milk
Cow Blues by Sleepy
John Estes (1930) although the lyrics haven't got much in common. In
1934 Kokomo Arnold covered the song,
still much the same as the original one.
Fuller's version is closer to Milkcow's
Calf Blues, recorded by Robert
Johnson on his last session in June 1937 and with a new set of
lyrics. Copyright wasn't really an issue in those days, as Lawrence
W. Levine explains in his study 'Black Culture and Black
Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom'.
Black singers felt absolutely free to take blues sung by others -
friends, professional performers, singers on records - and alter them in
any way they liked.
Fuller certainly was no exception to that rule and re-utilises a couple
of Johnson's lyrics:
Your calf is hungry mama, I believe he needs a suck.
and
Your milk is turnin' blue, I believe he's out of luck.
, but then he is off into his own miserable territory:
I found out now mama, the reason why I can't satisfy you... (…) You've
got a new cat, he's sixteen years old.
There's that trousered cat again! From then on the song turns
pseudo-autobiographical and the protagonist promises he will be faithful
to his wife from now on and to treat her well:
I'm gonna save my jelly, mama, gonna bring it right home to you. (...) You
can't find no young cat, roll jelly like this old one do.
For those thinking that Fuller is keen on sweet desserts, we would like
to add that jelly is not what you think it is, except when you have a
perverted mind and then it is exactly what you think it is.
A stanza later we learn that the I-person in the song is none other than
Fuller himself. He apologises that the flesh is weak and the blues
groupies abundant:
Says I got a new way of rollin' mama, I think it must be best. Said
these here North Carolina women just won't let Blind Boy Fuller rest.
But just when you think it would be wise to show some discretion male
chauvinist ego takes over again and Fuller brags that he is the best
lover around:
Said I got the kind of lovin', yes Lord, I think it must be best. Said
I roll jelly in the mornin' and I also roll at night. I said hey
hey, I also roll at night. And I don't stop rollin', till I know I
rolled that jelly just right.
We doubt the lyrics need further explanation, unless perhaps you are
confused by the terms jelly and jelly-roll, another example of pastry
being used as a sexual metaphor. Harry's Blues gives a neat definition
and lists 15 songs that use the same terminology.
The last song on side A of the album is Mojo
Hidin' Woman, and compared to the previous lot a rather solemn and
respectful one, although it still blames the wife who brings misery over
the man. Blind Boy Fuller refers (literally) to black magic and the
woman's habit of concealing a mojo,
a magical charm bag, on her body.
Fuller probably means a 'nation
sack', a term originating from the Memphis area, which is a red
flannel bag containing roots, magical stones and personal objects, worn
by a woman, meant to keep her man faithful and make him generous in
money matters.
Other sources say it should be 'nature
sack'. Harry
Middleton Hyatt, a white Anglican minister who studied folklore in
the thirties and who documented over 13000 (!) magic spells and beliefs,
may have misunderstood the Negro term 'naycha' and wrote it down as
'nation' instead of 'nature'. In hoodoo it was seriously believed that
the magical bag controls a man's 'naycha' or virility. No wonder that
Blind Boy Fuller didn't laugh at this one.
To make the spell powerful some objects of the love interest were put in
the bag, a photograph, his name or signature on a piece of paper, cloth,
fingernail clippings, (pubic) hair and other intimate by-products... The
bag was worn under the clothes, at the lower waist for obvious magical
reasons, and it was strictly forbidden to be touched, or even seen, by a
man. Married women would hide it before going to bed:
Yo' know, a man bettah not try tuh put dere han' on dat bag; yo' know,
he betta not touch. He goin' have some trouble serious wit dat ole lady
if he try tuh touch dat bag, 'cause when she pulls it off at night -- if
she sleeps by herself, she sleeps wit it on; but if she got a husban',
yo'll see her evah night go an' lock it up in dat trunk. [Taken from Nation
Sack @ Lucky Mojo.]
Not that a pious man would ever try to do that, as touching the bag
would make him lose, as Austin
Powers erroneously put it, 'his
mojo'. As the naycha sack was strict taboo for a man it was a safe
place for the woman to put her belongings in, money and tobacco, and if
the money had been given to her by her husband, that could only act as
an extra charm.
Mojo Hidin' Woman is the same song as Stingy
Mama, recorded a month earlier, but with a new title. Fuller knows
exactly what he sings about:
My girl's got a mojo. She won't let me see.
In true hokum tradition the song is full of double entendres, starting
with the first line:
Stingy mama, don't be so stingy with me.
As the (secret) mojo was often used or hidden inside a purse a 'stingy'
woman is one who doesn't like to spend money, but in this context mojo
is of course used as an euphemism for sex. Being the sexy motherfucker
he is, Fuller knows she will finally give in:
I say, hey-hey, mama, can't keep that mojo hid... 'Cause I got
something, mama, just to find that mojo with.
The song perfectly ends with a play of words, ingeniously hinting at the
'stingy' remark of the beginning:
Mama left me something called that stingaree. Says, I done stung my
little woman and she can't stay away from me.
Sex has never been described better, even if you don't immediately grasp
the concept of a stingaree, but once again Harry's Blues comes to the rescue.
This is, if you ask the Reverend, as poetical as:
'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..
Recorded: September 7, 1937 (Stingy Mama: July 12, 1937) Sound
and Lyrics
Country Blues Side Two
Piccolo Rag
Side two starts with the Blind Boy Fuller classic Piccolo
Rag that can be found on about every compilation of him. It's a
joyous and irresistible ragtime guitar dancing tune that is typical of
the Piedmont Blues style. It is a fun track with a direct message that
doesn't need to be further explained:
Every night I come home you got your lips painted red. Said, "Come
on Daddy and let's go to bed."
In the first decade of the twentieth century a 'daddy'
in African American slang was a pimp, but later the term was generalised
to any male lover.
Lost
Lover Blues is the sad story of a man who takes a freight train to
'a far distant land', probably to look for work, and who gets a telegram
to immediately return home. On his return he finds that his lover has
died while he was on his journey. The message is clear and direct with
no double entendres, but this is normal as the subject is one of
melancholy and sadness.
Then I went back home, I looked on the bed And that best old
friend I had was dead Lord, and I ain't got no lovin' baby now
Recorded, June 19, 1940 with Bull City Red (washboard). Sound
& Lyrics
Night Rambling Woman
Fuller's last solo song recorded on the 19th of June 1940, in a
'superstar' session that also had Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Eli
Jordan Webb (originally from Nashville) and Bull City Red (credited on
some tracks as Oh Red). Thirteen solo tracks were recorded, 8 by Fuller
and one by Sonny Terry.
The remaining four tracks are credited to a band called Brother
George & His Sanctified Singers, actually an alias for all
involved, singing religious inspired gospel and blues, with titles as:
'Must have been my Jesus', 'Jesus is a holy man' or 'Precious Lord'.
Fuller did not sing on this gospel session and it may have been George
'Oh Red' Washington who was the main vocalist.
Rambling Woman is not an unique term as it was used in the traditional Ragged
But Right that dates from around 1900. Recorded versions exist by
the Blue
Harmony Boys (Ragged
But Right, 1929) and Riley
Puckett (Ragged
But Right, 1935). As a traditional it had many different lyrics
including this very raunchy version:
Just called up to tell you that I'm ragged but right A gamblin' woman
ramblin' woman, drunk every night I fix a porterhouse steak every
night for my boy That's more than an ordinary whore can afford
Night Rambling Woman was posthumously issued by Brownie McGhee in 1941,
partly as a tribute to his friend, but probably as a cunning plan from
manager J.B. Long to cash in on Fuller's reputation by covering a
previous unreleased track. J.B. Long also put the epithet 'Blind Boy
Fuller #2' on early McGhee singles, for instance on the song Death
Of Blind Boy Fuller.
Night Rambling Woman is another take on the infidelity of women with one
line taken from Victoria
Spivey's 1926 song Black
Snake Blues, generally regarded as a stab at Fuller's own mortality:
My left side jumps and my flesh begin to crawl.
It has been said that Fuller was a master of eclecticism rather than the
originator of a style and there are many recorded examples in which the
influence of other popular blues artists can be heard.
Step
It Up And Go, credited to J.B. Long, was Fuller's biggest hit,
although far from an original. Known as Bottle
Up And Go it was recorded in 1939 by Tommy
McClennan, himself referring to Bottle
It Up And Go, written by Charlie
Burse for the Picanniny
Jug Band in 1932. J.B. Long claimed he heard a song 'You got to
touch it up and go' from an old blues man and that he re-wrote the
lyrics for Fuller to sing it a couple of days later.
Blues biographer Bruce Bastin found out that just before the Fuller
session Charlie Burse had cut a new version of his own song, now titled:
'Oil It Up And Go', in the same studio. That is probably where J.B. Long
heard and copied it from.
Many artists recorded this song after that, and all versions are
different. It seems as if every artist who performed the song, made up
his own lyrics or added a verse or two. Some of the people who recorded
the song are: B.B. King, Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys, Bob Dylan,
Brownie McGhee, Carl Story, Harmonica Frank Floyd, John Lee Hooker, Mac
Wiseman, Maddox Brothers & Rose, Mungo Jerry, Sonny Terry and The Everly
Brothers.
The song is in the hokum style with casual observations about (again)
the terrible treatment men suffer from their women.
Keep
Away From My Woman, this song actually exists in two different
takes, from the same session, with about 20 seconds difference, but the
vinyl record doesn't specify what version it is (same for Cat Man Blues,
by the way). The title already gives away what the tune is about.
Recorded: April 29, 1936. Sound
(take 1, 2:54), Sound
(take 2, 3:14), but no Lyrics found.
Hey mama, hey gal, don't you hear Blind Boy Fuller callin' you? You're
so sweet, so sweet, yeah sweet, my little woman, so sweet...
The song was first recorded as So
sweet, so sweet by Josh
White in 1932 and Fuller's version is nearly a carbon copy of the
original.
“The effects of the phonograph upon black folk-song are not easily
summed up.”, writes Lawrence Levine in 'Black Culture and Black
Conciousness'. Mamie
Smith's second single Crazy
Blues (1920), the first vocal blues recording in history, had sold
over one million copies despite being exorbitantly priced at one dollar.
In the mid twenties five to six million blues records were sold per
year, almost exclusively to the black public, who were with about 15
million in the USA. After the blast-off with mostly female singers
talent scouts roamed the states to audition regional bluesmen who
brought their version of traditional blues to the rest of the land.
It can't be denied that the booming record sales had a disruptive effect
on many local folk styles and traditions, but on the other hand, the
thousands of 78-RPM records archived songs that would otherwise have
been lost for ever. Even if the records had to fit inside the three
minutes format, blues had no beginning and no end, as the one performer
took up where the other left off and singers were constantly referring
to each other. A blues song didn't belong to the singer, it belonged to
the people.
Other trivia: Blues band Shakey
Vick named their first album,
in 1969, after this song.
Brownskin
and Sugar
Plum are terms that regularly appear in blues songs, although the
combination of both might be unique to this one.
It has been a while since we mentioned Led Zeppelin but their Travelling
Riverside Blues, itself named after a Robert Johnson tune (Traveling
Riverside Blues), ends by mentioning this Fuller song. Another fine
example of hokum blues, the lyrics are just damn' horny:
Oh just tell me mama Where do you get your sugar from Aw just tell
me sugar where you get your sugar from I believe I bit down On
your daddy's sugar plum
The last song Evil
Hearted Woman is one where the female race is again described at its
worst. It isn't the only time Fuller sings about an evil hearted woman
as the term is also used in his Untrue
Blues (not on this compilation).
Recorded: July 25, 1935. Sound,
but no Lyrics found.
In Evil Hearted Woman, My brownskin sugarplum, and Keep away from my
woman there is love, there is desire, there is menace, there is
jealousy, there is disappointment and there is humour.
We couldn't have said it better. If this record was good enough for Syd
Barrett to listen to, it surely is good enough for us as well. Listening
to Country Blues may be a challenge if your ears have been used to the
electric and electronic sounds of the third millennium, but this is R&B
in its embryonical stage. Dig it.
Epilogue
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit started in 2008, more as a prank than
anything else (see: Felix
Atagong: an honest man), and has worn out its welcome more than
once. Feeling that our expiration date was reached at least a year ago,
it is time to say goodbye. And what better opportunity than to do it
with the album that named the best band in the word.
Let's give our final words to one of our esteemed colleagues, the
Reverend Gary Davis:
One of these days about 12 o'clock This old world's gonna reel and
rock I belong to the band Hallelujah (I
Belong to the Band, Hallelujah, 1960)
Many thanks to: Bennymix, Cagey, Caitrin, Deanna, Jim Dixon, Dorothea,
Brian Hoskin, Elise Israd, Mudcat.org,
Parla, Stephen Pyle, Tony Russell, Sorcha, Stagg'O'Lee, Dave T,
Winifred, Wordreference.com,
Zowieso... ♥
Iggy ♥ Libby ♥ friends, lovers and fans...
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Baigent,
Michael & Leigh, Richard: The Elixir and the Stone, Penguin,
London, 1998, p. 399. Bastin, Bruce: Blind Boy Fuller,
biography in: Stefan Grossman's early masters of American blues guitar:
Blind Boy Fuller, Alfred Music Publishing, 2007. Bastin, Bruce: Red
River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast, University of
Illinois Press, 1995, p. 223-234. Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly,
Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 43. Charters, Samuel: Carolina
Blues Man, Pink Anderson vol. 1 record liner notes, 1961. Charters,
Samuel: Medicine Show Man, Pink Anderson vol. 2 record liner
notes, 1961. Charters, Samuel: Ballad & Folksinger, Pink
Anderson vol. 3 record liner notes, 1961. Dosanjh, Warren: The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge, I Spy In Cambridge, Cambridge, 2013,
p. 54. Goodall, Howard: Painters, Pipers, Prisoners. The musical
legacy of Pink Floyd., in: Pink Floyd. Their Mortal Remains, London,
2017, p.82. Green, Jonathon: Days In The Life, Pimlico,
London, 1998, p. 104. Hogg, Brian: What Colour is Sound?,
Crazy Diamond CD box booklet, 1993. Israd, Elise: The use of food
as a sexual metaphor in the blues, 2008?, (original page
deleted, partially archived
page) Levine, Lawrence W. : Black Culture and Black Consciousness:
Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Oxford
University Press, 2007 reprint, p. 225-232. McInnis, Mike : This
one's Pink, Unraveling the mysteries behind the Pink Floyd name,
2006. Miles, Barry: London Calling: a countercultural history of
London since 1945, Atlantic Books, London, 2010, p. 181. Miles,
Barry: Pink Floyd The Early Years, Omnibus Press, London, 2006,
p. 46. Miles, Barry & Mabbett, Andy: Pink Floyd The Visual
Documentary, Omnibus Press, London, 1994 edition, unnumbered pages,
1965 section. Obrecht, Jas: Blind
Boy Fuller: His Life, Recording Sessions, and Welfare Records, 2011. Oliver,
Paul: Country Blues 1935-'40, Blind Boy Fuller liner notes, 1962. Palacios,
Julian: Lost In The Woods, Boxtree, London, 1998, p. 40. Povey,
Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing,
2008, p. 18. Pyle, Stephen: Pink & Floyd, message on
21/03/2015 16:38. Schaffner, Nicholas: Saucerful of Secrets,
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1991, p. 30. Schwartz, Roberta Freund
: How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of
American Blues Style in the United Kingdom, Ashgate Popular and Folk
Music Series, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008, p. 91-95. Stagg'O'Lee: Blind
Boy Fuller, Sa Vie, Gazette Greenwood, 2003. Watkinson, Mike &
Anderson, Pete: Crazy Diamond, Omnibus Press, London, 1993, p. 31. Weck,
Lars: Pink Floyd på visit, Dagens Nyheter, 1967-09-11. Welch,
Chris: Learning to Fly, Castle Communications, Chessington, 1994,
p. 26. Zolten, Jerry: Great God A'Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds :
Celebrating the Rise of Soul, Oxford University Press, 2002, p.
54-57.
Let's cut the crap. Most Sydiots, a perfect term coined by a Syd
Barrett fan-site webmaster who turned out to be an internet charlatan,
are nuts.
A Facebook search gives about twenty Barrett-related groups (not
counting the hidden ones obviously), ranging from 7 to well over 7000
members, but at the moment you read this this may well have varied as
new groups sprout regularly, mostly when ex-members create new groups
out of frustration with another one.
In 2006, due to a sudden emotional storm that swept through my
household, I dived deep into those muddy waters that define Barrettism.
Joining the madcap cult is not unlike the rise into a masonic lodge and
by studying hard and absorbing facts and figures one constantly
progresses onto the Barrett road and closer to the 'secret', the
'mystery', the 'enigma', whatever that may be. It is a slow path, but
one that is rewarding, at least that is what we are fooling ourselves
with.
Pink
Floyd carefully cultivated the Barrett myth throughout the years,
gaining millions of pounds in the madcap's slipstream, although they
have never been eager to share a slice of the pie. Rumours go the band
took advantage of Syd's frail mental state in the early seventies
peer-pressuring him into selling his financial share in the Pink Floyd
company. Roger Waters may have written Wish
You Were Here out of remorse, but that was not to be taken too
literally and it certainly didn't apply when Syd kept asking for his
paycheck. This doesn't mean that Barrett was a poor boy though. Dark
Side, Wish You Were Here, The Wall and The Division Bell all made new
fans who would check out The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn or a Floyd
compilation with some of his early tracks.
Selling Barrett by the pound is not a Pink Floyd prerogative.
Photographers Storm
Thorgerson and Mick
Rock turned it into an industry, publishing virtually the same
books, with different titles to fool the public, every couple of years.
Another grab in the rumour-mill goes that they sued, or threaten to sue,
each-other to decide, once and for all, who got the rights of precisely
what Barrett pictures. It all is the messy consequence of both of them
turning up, on the same day in 1969, for the photo-shoot of Barrett's
now legendary and considered cult album, The
Madcap Laughs, and mixing up the negatives. Apparently they came to
an arrangement that suited both, what cannot be said of the model on the
backside of the album who still has to receive the first penny for her
performance of 45 years ago.
Much lower at the Sydiverse are those people who once knew him,
or those silly tossers (m/f) pretending to have known him, often in the
biblical sense of that phrase, and who are frantically trying to keep
the memory alive and their reputation high, which can be something of a
rope-dancing exercise.
My eternal admiration goes to the person who remarked rather dispirited:
If it weren't for the fact Syd Barrett stuck his cock in me... who
would really give a fuck about me?
Exactly.
Two: Life is just...
Years ago, I remarked to one of those infallible Syd Barrett-insiders
that there could be a good book in the adventures of the
Cambridge-mafia, beatniks and hipsters who went to London to seek for
fame and fortune, circling (and sometimes dying) like moths around the
Floyd's psychedelic flame.
To my knowledge that book was never written, but some bits and pieces
can be found in various (early) Pink Floyd biographies and other
Swingin' London debris. And there is of course the more than excellent 'The
Music Scene of 1960s Cambridge', now in its 6th edition, researched
and compiled by Warren
Dosanjh, although it tends to look at Pink Floyd as something funny
smelling.
Cambridge beatnik and après-beatnik life can also be found in a few
autobiographies. William
Pryor's The Survival Of The Coolest and Matthew
Scurfield's I Could Be Anyone each have Floydian encounters,
mainly because it was impossible to frequent hip places and not meet Syd
Barrett. Nick Sedgwick's
novel Light Blue With Bulges tried to turn the adventures of a
would-be beat poet into a novel, but as far as I can remember it pretty
much sucked, despite the presence of a certain Mr. Roger Waters as an
arrogant bass player.
Nigel
Lesmoir-Gordon (NLG) was typecasted as 'Andy' in that novel. In the
early sixties he operated the coffee-machine in the trendy coffee-bar El
Patio and organised poetry readings and art events, that put him in the
centre of the avant-garde cultural elite. Although he moved on into
TV/film business he sometimes still performs on art happenings,
accurately described by satirist Mick Brown as 'a load of old toffs
stuck in a lava lamp'.
In his latest novel 'Life Is Just...' NLG describes a typical
British dysfunctional family in the year 1962. Well, typical... The
authoritarian father, a respected and feared dean at the Cambridge
university, is a living example of the rigorous conservatism of the
post-war years, while the children, two sons and a daughter, are
experimenting with the newfound freedom that is modern jazz, beat
literature, pot and premarital sex. Mother Mary, trapped between loyalty
towards her husband and love for her children, tries to hold the house
together, despite the cracks in the cement, speaking words of wisdom, as
the song goes.
When NLG informed the Barrett community that a Syd-like painter and
musician, Richard Bannerman, turns up as one of the main
characters there was no unanimous cheer and this time this was not due
to the fact that the madcap community mainly consists of a lethargic
bunch of wankers. In 2000 NLG directed the docu-fiction Remember
A Day about an imaginary sixties musician, Roger Bannerman.
The film was made with amateurs, some sixties underground celebrities
thinking they could act, had a non-existing script and it resulted into
a vehicle that makes the Jan
& Dean biopic Deadman's
Curve (1978) look like Oscar material.
But of course I would never have read 'Life Is Just...' without the
Barrett connotation. NLG knows how to trigger some buzz with us anoraks,
that is for sure. But after the initial nerdy questions, such as, is
Richard Bannerman a realistic portrait of Roger Barrett and did he
really was a gigolo on a bike, the character takes over as a character
and not as a clone of a once famous musician stroke womaniser. That's
the strength of the author and its story, I guess.
Not that the story is that particular. At a certain point La
vie est un long fleuve tranquille popped into my mind, there is an
old family mystery, some unavoidable traumatic things occur and life
simply goes on after as if nothing has happened...
One of the brothers, Dominic, is probably an alter-ego of the author. He
travels to India, in search for a guru, where he meets Meher
Baba and Swami Satchit Ananda, who takes his preference.
While the trip to and through India is a fine read, there are also
portions where the character tries to explain the reasons to follow the
mystical path, sometimes with excerpts from other books. It comes over a
bit like preaching and ostentatiously is one of the author's darlings.
Several Cantibrigians did go to India, although not as early as here.
Paul Charrier made the trip in 1966 and came back a changed man (see
also: We
are all made of stars and Formentera
Lady). He was so enthusiast that he converted others (including NLG)
to follow the path as well, cutting the Cambridge underground scene (and
its London satellites) literally in half. Others did not agree, like
Storm Thorgerson and Matthew Scurfield who called the Indian invasion a
'wave of saccharine mysticism hitting our shores'. Syd Barrett, as we
fans know, was also tempted to follow the path, but was rejected by the
master. He continued his hedonist life, living it fully, what may have
lead to his decline. Isn't it ironic?
At the end not only Dominic's life has dramatically changed, but also
that of his brother, sister and mother. The dark family mystery is known
to the reader but not to them, yet... so I'm pretty curious what the
second instalment of this trilogy will bring, and of course if Richard
Bannerman's band Green Onions will hit the charts or not.
While not earth-shattering Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon has written a pretty
fine book and the Kindle version costs less than a Guinness at The
Anchor, so what you are waiting for, you lazy Barrett faggots?
Update January 2020: RIP Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon, 10 January 2020.
Obituary by David Gale:
I met Nigel Lesmoir Gordon, who died today, when I was fifteen, in our
home town of Cambridge. We became fast friends. He was endowed with
God-like physical beauty, a finely muscled physique of classical Greek
proportion, a voracious appetite for all aspects of the emerging Beat
culture and a charming but deceptive lightness of manner. One might have
been tempted to wonder just what manner of companion this angel-headed
godling would seek in that dappled city. He was not your standard posho
but one of those who somehow endured the harsh and unrelenting
regulation of his school yet, like others in the Cambridge bohemian
scene, managed to get under the radar, over the fence and leg it for the
badlands. When he was 17 he fell in love with Jenny and, after a while,
they moved to London, as did many of us. Their flat in Cromwell Road
acquired an international prominence – the police would have used the
word ‘notoriety’ - as a beatnik salon in the soaring 60s and the gilded
but generous couple hosted a nightly meeting of countless international
travellers, seers, babblers, poets, writers, arts activists,
film-makers, alternative journalists, freaks, ambulant schizophrenics
and those who were none of the above but trod the paths of meditation,
worship and unusual diets. We went our ways after a while but stayed
affectionately in touch. A few months ago he was told he had a few
months to live and this morning the multiple cancers bore him away.
Nigel – ‘Les’ to some of us - will be missed terribly by all who knew
him, not least Jenny, his children Daisy and Gabriel and all the
grandchildren.
Many thanks: Mick Brown, David Gale, Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon. ♥ Iggy ♥
Libby ♥
"Bored socialist millionaires making solo records."
This header from a review of the About
Face album duly infuriated me, about three decades ago. In this
review the critic satirised the fact that David
Gilmour had asked colleague Pete
Townshend, from an equally legendary band, to help him out on a
couple of tracks.
In retrospect the About Face album tried a bit too hard to launch
Gilmour on a successful solo career, it was a bit too AOR,
too Foreigner-ish
to be good. The general audience wasn't interested in Pink
Floyd members going solo anyway and - in Belgium - Gilmour only
played a small university hall in Brussels, that was only partially
filled, if my memory is correct. Not that I was there, I didn’t go as
well, but that was thanks to my legendary social anxiety disorder.
Things are different now, the music industry may be complaining music
isn’t selling, but at least there is an appetite for the musicians
formerly known as Pink Floyd.
The buzz has been going on for quite a while now and you might except
that a new David Gilmour album is something like the second coming of
Christ. I’m a bit sceptic when things are getting overhyped, since Star
Trek V was promoted with the slogan ‘why are they putting seatbelts
in theatres this summer’? As the movie-goers found out, it was to
prevent them from leaving after fifteen minutes.
Although the preliminary signs weren't all too positive, who composes a
(rather mediocre) song around an annoying French railway jingle anyway
and links it to a text from John
Milton?, I tried to remain neutral when the CD appeared in the
stores.
5 AM starts a bit like the absolutely beautiful Let’s
Get Metaphysical (About Face) and makes me think remotely of At
The End Of The Day from Mason + Fenn's Profiles
album. It’s a nice introduction, but just when it could go somewhere it
simply fades out, what happens with several tracks on this album
unfortunately. It’s a nice, somewhat colourless intro, but that is
default Pink Floyd territory, so to speak.
Rattle That Lock sits in your brain like a cockroach and jumps up
when you least expect it. It’s Gilmour’s most catchy number in years,
sounding a bit like one of these irresistible Chris
Rea tunes: I
can hear your heart beat / Rattle that lock. The problem is, who has
heard of Chris Rea for the last 3 decades? The song has a standard
eighties feel with irritant percussion, irritant singing and irritant
lyrics and is a serious contestant to replace The
Dogs Of War as Gilmour’s worst song ever. On top of that the track
uses a sample from the Momentary
Lapse Of Reason days (Learning
To Fly) and that is how it sounds actually, fucking dated. While
David Gilmour gladly acknowledges that About Face suffers from the
eighties (over-)production, he does it all over again on this track.
Actually I am glad I don’t live in France so I don’t have to hear the SNCF
jingle on a daily basis and be reminded every time of this turd.
Faces of Stone. For a moment I feared Gilmour was going klezmer
but this is a little waltz that regularly puts you on the wrong foot.
Perhaps the best track on the album, although not among Gilmour’s bests,
if you know what I mean. It says something of the quality of the other
tracks, I fear. I guess I’m just happy there is a cool solo at the end.
Gilmour’s eulogy to Rick
WrightA Boat Lies Waiting starts with a long and slow intro
that could have been on The
Endless River. Although there is the tendency from fans to find it a
fitting remembrance it is a bit monotonous, despite some nice singing
from Crosby
and Nash. The song ends rather abrupt as if these old tossers were
suddenly out of breath, but others think that it is a symbolical way to
visualise how Rick was taken out of this world. Beautiful, but not
really earth-shattering and the fact that it is about Wright probably
makes me judge it milder than the others.
I don’t honestly know what to think of Dancing In Front Of Me,
I would like to like it, but then there is that feeling that it could’ve
been much better and that it is just a filler. Gilmour obviously is a
happy man and happy men, so goes the first rule of rock'n'roll, don’t
make great records. What if The
Wall had tracks like ‘My father and me went fishing’, ‘My mother was
always positive towards me’ and ‘Pink has a successful garden shop in
Cambridge’? Nobody would’ve bought it.
In Any Tongue first has some whistling for god’s sake, but then
it takes off like all the others in that lazy tone that specifies this
record. For a moment the refrain brings a solace, a glimpse of Floydian
grandeur, but – fearing I’m getting repetitive – the song never seems to
blossom, except perhaps for that ending 'Comfortably
Numb'-ish solo. With some help from Roger
Waters and Rick Wright this could’ve been an epic track. Wait a
minute. Did I just ask for Roger Waters? Something must be really wrong
with this record.
Beauty starts like it could’ve been a part of the last Floyd and
perhaps it was. Still sounds like a bit of filler, with a slight touch
of One
of These Days. Too many bread and not enough cheese on this album
though.
The Girl In The Yellow Dress or Gilmour and Samson go jazz.
Unfortunately it is the kind of jazz you hear as a soundtrack on French
romantic movies. This would be a cute track on a Jools
Holland album and actually that guy manipulates the piano here, as
are Robert
Wyatt and Bob
(Rado) Klose. But as it is definitely something else it kind of
stands out against the rest. Different, not better.
Today starts like a church hymn, never a good sign, but then a
funky guitar takes over with a Fame
signature, unfortunately one of the David
Bowie tracks I loathe the most. Today is a mixed bag, has some awful
singing, and seems to be getting nowhere, like most of the disco dance
floor fillers. Chris Rea once sang 'I'm in a European disco', but this
is no Saturday
Night Fever, I'm afraid.
And then… there is a relieved sigh that this record is
finally over. The last instrumental will be used by radio makers all
over the world to end their show with and thank the audience for their
kind attention. If it had a sax solo it could also have been used to
musically accompany an episode of Red
Shoe Diaries, but just like that soft erotic drama series it never
really gets off the ground.
No sex please, we're British
As a matter of fact that is not such a bad comparison. David Gilmour has
given us a soft-core record, that will obviously be loved by millions,
but personally I was expecting something more 'in the flesh'. Of course
this isn't a bad record, David Gilmour is smart enough not to make 'bad'
records, but it is just so... dull, flat, uninspired. Like that American
cheese with no holes, no smell and also no taste.
As a final note I would like to add that the album comes in a regular
and a deluxe version. At almost the triple in price you get an
incredible amount of, what the Dutch describe so beautiful as, 'prullaria'
(kitsch, rubbish). One of those is a piece of plastic that is called a
plectrum, although 'plectrum-ish' would be far more closer to the
truth. It could be a plectrum for an ukulele, but apparently that is an
instrument you can't use a plectrum on, so tells me a musician who is
the master of all things strings. Whatever. (At the Holy Church Tumblr
page there is a gallery with the contents of the deluxe box: Unpacking
Rattle That Lock #1 and Unpacking
Rattle That Lock #2.)
The deluxe edition also contains a Blu-ray (or DVD) with a few
meticulous surround mixes, a couple of barn jams between Gilmour and
Wright and some horrifically bad remixes of Rattle That Lock. The barn
jams used to be online but they have already been deleted by the Pink
Floyd gestapo.
Conclusion
This is a fucking disappointing record and one that certainly won't help
me through my midlife crisis. On the other hand, Jason
Lytle has just announced a new Grandaddy
album. So there is still a reason to keep on going on with this
miserable life. But first, I think I'm going to have a listen to About
Face, compared to Rattle That Lock, it is a masterpiece.
This is a review of the Dutch Pink Floyd biography: De Som Der Delen
(The sum of the parts). There is nothing wrong with your browser as
the review is in Dutch as well.
Het wordt weer cadeautjesseizoen en dan is er tijd en plaats voor... een
nieuw Pink Floyd boek!
Muziekjournalist Wouter Bessels schreef 'Pink
Floyd: De Som Der Delen' voor de Rockklassiekers-reeks
dat ook Nederlandstalige biografieën over Deep Purple, Elvis Presley,
The Beach Boys, Focus en Kayak in huis heeft. De auteur zegt dat het 'de
eerste allesomvattende biografie in de Nederlandse taal over de carrière
van Pink Floyd en haar vijf groepsleden is geworden' maar dat is maar
hoe je het bekijkt. De Heilige Kerk van Iggy de Inuit besprak eerder de
Nederlandse uitgave van Hugh Fielders Behind
The Wall (2014) en ooit, in een zeer ver verleden, was er een boek
met de geïnspireerde titel 'Pink Floyd' (1994) van William Ruhlmann,
beiden vertalingen uit het Engels overigens. Maar als Bessels bedoelt
dat dit de eerste in het Nederlands geschreven biografie is heeft hij
natuurlijk overschot van gelijk, meer nog: dit is momenteel het meest
complete Pink Floyd boek ter wereld omdat het ook The
Endless River bespreekt en zelfs Rattle
That Lock aanhaalt. Bessels zelf is een jonge snaak die The
Wall ontdekte in 1987, wat ook al rijkelijk overtijd was, maar dat
album liet een onvergetelijke indruk na op hem (terwijl ik dat maar een
zwak broertje vond na The
Dark Side of the Moon, Wish
You Were Here en Animals).
Even checken hoe hij er vanaf brengt.
Tijd voor de Ster
Vooraleer het boek van start gaat is er een mini-bio over de heren Anderson
en Council.
Van Floyd Council wordt er gezegd dat hij 27 nummers opnam waarvan zeven
als achtergrondzanger voor Blind Boy Fuller. Dit is kopieer-plakwerk uit
de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia, niets op tegen natuurlijk maar Council
was toch wat meer dan een zanger in het achtergrond-koortje. Maar deze
opmerking hoort hier enkel thuis om wat reclame te maken over onze
eigen, massieve, bijdrage over de roots van Pink Floyd: Step
It Up And Go.
Nederwiet
Het boek begint met het verschijnen van The Endless River wat het einde
betekent van Pink Floyd als groep. Bessels schrijft dat het deels
gebaseerd is op The Big Spliff, in 1993 samengesteld door Martin
'Youth' Glover. Dat is niet zo. The Big Spliff werd gemaakt door Andy
Jackson tijdens de opnames van The
Division Bell. Youth kwam pas twintig jaar later in actie als één
van de co-producers van het laatste Floyd album. Het is een euvel waar
dit boek meer aan lijdt. Bessels weet wel steeds de som te maken maar
slaat een aantal keren de bal mis inzake detailkennis maar laat ons nu
net dat soort van kommaneukers zijn dat zich daaraan ergert.
Dan neemt het boek de chronologische volgorde aan, startend met de
ontstaansgeschiedenis van de band. Er wordt niet zo lang stilgestaan bij
de underground-fase van de groep als in andere biografieën, waar de
periode 1965-1967 soms een derde inneemt van het geheel. Eind 1967, als
Barrett het laat afweten, worden David
O’List en Jeff
Beck gebeld om de groep te vervoegen. Werkelijk? Alle andere
biografieën houden er een andere mening op na. David O’List zou
misschien wel hebben toegehapt als we dit interview uit 2015 mogen
geloven: Davy
O’List – Second Thoughts.
Zo gaat het boek verder in een mix van algemeenheden en wat meer
gedetailleerde wist-je-datjes. Niet onaardig om lezen maar het komt mij
toch wat luchtig over. Wat dan wel weer leuk is is het overvloedig
citeren van songteksten. Soms vind ik dat Bessels schrijfstijl wat
houterig overkomt en een loopje neemt met de Nederlandse taal
('allerdaagse' spanningen?) en hier en daar is de spellingscontrole wat
te overijverig geweest. Zo wordt het Engelse 'wall', niet onbekend voor
Pink Floyd-adepten, naar ik meen, een paar keer vervangen door het
Nederlandse 'wal'.
Delen door vijf
De geschiedenis van Pink Floyd neemt zo'n 160 bladzijden in beslag en
eindigt met het hoofdstuk 'Erfenis' met informatie over de verschillende
compilaties, remasters, bootlegs, coverversies en coverbands. Het tweede
deel van het boek, 58 bladzijden, behandelt de solocarrières van de
aparte bandleden en doet dat heel wat gedetailleerder dan de meeste
andere biografieën. Wij vlooien even de tekst over Syd
Barrett na, wat had je anders gedacht?
Dat hoofdstuk begint met Barretts opmerkelijke verschijning in de Abbey
Road studio's tijdens de opnames van Shine
On You Crazy Diamond waar hij nu en dan een tandenborstel boven
haalt. Dat verhaal komt van Richard Wright en werd verder verteld door
John Leckie en Peter Jenner, hoewel die laatste niet eens in de studio
was op die dag. De andere getuigen, en er zijn er genoeg om een
voetbalploeg mee samen te stellen, hebben geen weet van een
tandenborstel. Overigens twijfelen Gilmour en Mason of ze wel met de
track 'Shine On' bezig waren. Om biograaf Mark
Blake te citeren in Mojo: “Geen twee mensen vertellen een
eensluidend verhaal.” In latere jaren werd het tandenborstel-verhaal
grotendeels ontkracht door diezelfde Mark Blake die erover postte op het Late
Night forum, maar echt zekerheid brengt dit ook weer niet.
Storm op til
Wat verder schrijft Bessels dat de hoesfoto op The
Madcap Laughs door Mick
Rock gemaakt werd. Niet correct. Die iconische foto komt van Storm
Thorgerson. Officieel althans, maar dat is dan ook de enige versie
die telt. Wel leuk is dat er vermeld wordt dat Syd Barrett jamde met de Last
Minute Put Together Boogie Band wat een soort generale repetitie was
voor het desastreuze Stars project. (Zie ook: LMPTBB.)
Als het gaat over het outtakes album Opel
wordt de songtekst van Word Song (of Untitled Words) afgedrukt om
de bizarre genialiteit van Barrett toe te lichten. In de versie van
Wouter Bessels eindigt Word Song met de zin 'Rooftop in a thunderstorm
missing the point'. Die laatste zin behoort natuurlijk niet tot Word
Song, maar is de titel van een gedicht dat in de Hipgnosis archieven
werd teruggevonden en gepubliceerd werd in het fanblad Terrapin (als A
Rooftop Song In A Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point). Blijkbaar is er
iemand wat overijverig geweest met het knip- en plakwerk. (Zie ook: Bonhams
Sells Fake Barrett Poem)
Tot slot, ik weet wel dat Pink Floyd Barrett een poot heeft uitgedraaid
door hem uit de band te gooien maar ik wist niet dat men in 2006 een
been bij hem amputeerde, alvast volgens Bessels die dit smeuïge detail
voor waar aanneemt.
Besluit
Voor de leek is dit best wel een interessant boek en dat is precies de
doelgroep voor wie het is bedoeld, niet voor de een of andere mopperende
dinosauriër die midden de jaren zeventig een 'oorgasme' kreeg na het
beluisteren van On
The Run. Net zoals Hugh Fielder is Wouter Bessels de auteur die de
verhalen bij anderen is gaan halen en die dan in zijn eigen versie giet.
De meerwaarde is dat dit boek werd geschreven in het Nederlands en dus
de eerst 'echte' Nederlandstalige Pink Floyd biografie is. Ook zijn de
meeste foto's originelen uit het archief van Peter Koks en de auteur
maar omdat het meestal gaat om live- of podium-shots lijken ze
natuurlijk op alle andere live- of podiumshots in andere boeken.
Toch kan ik me niet van de indruk ontdoen dat Hugh Fielders Behind The
Wall net dat tikkeltje beter is, met accuratere informatie, sterkere
foto's en, over het algemeen, een heel wat luxueuzere uitgave is en dat
voor nagenoeg dezelfde prijs.
June had the second (and if rumours are correct: last) Birdie Hop
meeting in Cambridge with Syd Barrett fans having an informal drink with
some of the early-sixties Cambridge beatniks we know and love so dearly:
Jenny Spires, Libby Gausden, Mick Brown, Peter Gilmour, Sandra Blickem,
Vic Singh, Warren Dosanjh and others...
Special guest star was none other than Iggy Rose who left, if we may
believe the natives, an everlasting impression. You can read all about
it at: Iggy
Rose in Cambridge.
Men On The Border came especially over from the northern parts of
Europe, leaving their igloo, so to speak, to gig at the Rathmore
Club where they not only jammed with other Syd-aficionados, but also
with Redcaps frontman Dave Parker. (For the history of those sixties
Cambridge bands check the excellent: The
Music Scene of 1960s Cambridge.)
The night before however, on Friday June 12th, Men On The Border played
the legendary Prince
Albert (that name always make us chuckle) music pub in Brighton.
This gig was recorded and is now the third album of Men On The Border,
after ShinE!
(2012) that consisted of Barrett covers and Jumpstart
(2013) that mainly had original songs but with a slightly concealed
madcap theme.
This live release shows that Men On The Border is a tight band and that
they can play their material without having to revert to digitally
wizardry. In a previous review we already remarked that:
...some of the influences of MOTB lay in the pub-rock from Graham Parker
& The Rumour, Rockpile (with Nick Lowe & Dave Edmunds) and the cruelly
under-appreciated The Motors...
This live album certainly proves that. The versions are pretty close to
the recorded versions and singer Göran Nystrom manages once again to
give us goosebumps on Late Night and their own Warm From You
that is a pretty ingenious song if you ask us (with a sly nod to Jimi
Hendrix)...
So give them a warm hand of applause and make them feel welcome in this
mad cat world of random precision.
Tracklist:
01 Terrapin (Jumpstart) 02 No Good Trying (ShinE!)
03 Scream Thy Last Scream (2015 single) 04 Long Gone (ShinE!)
05 Gigolo Aunt (ShinE!) 06 Late Night (ShinE!)
07 Octopus (ShinE!)
08 Warm From You (Jumpstart) 09 Baby Lemonade (ShinE!)
Digital release only, people don't buy plastic any more, unfortunately.
Pink Floyd, dear sistren and brethren of the Holy Church
of Iggy the Inuit, will never stop to amaze us, for better and for worse.
Riff-raff in the room
Two weeks ago saw the umpteenth incarnation of The Wall concept.
Let's try to count how many times this important work of musical art
more or less exists. We'll only take count of official and 'complete'
versions as individual songs from the Wall can be found on compilations,
live albums and concert movies from the band and its members going solo.
First there was The
Wall album by Pink Floyd (1979), followed by the 1982 movie
with the same name. In 1990 Roger Waters staged his rock opera in
Berlin, with guest performances by other artists, and this was
immortalised with an album
and a concert movie.
The twenty year anniversary of the album was celebrated at the turn of
the millennium by Is
There Anybody Out There, a live album taken from the eighties tour
by the classic Floyd, although Rick Wright technically was no longer a
member of the band.
2011 saw the Why
Pink Floyd? re-release campaign and three epic albums were issued in
an Experience and Immersion series, each with added content. The Wall Immersion
has 7 discs and four of these are the regular album and its live clone.
A third double-CD-set has the so-called Wall demos and WIP-tapes that
had already been largely around for a decade in collector's circles. A
bonus DVD contains some clips and documentaries, but not the concert
movie that is known to exist. For collectors The Wall Immersion was the
most disappointing of the series and the presence of a scarf, some
marbles and a few coasters only helped to augment that feeling.
Am I too old, is it too late?
In 2010 Roger Waters started a three years spanning tour
with a live Wall that promised to be bigger and better. It was certainly
more theatrical and if we may believe the Reverend, who watched the show
as interested as Mr.
Bean on a rollercoaster, boring as fuck. But with 4,129,863 sold
tickets it set a new record for being the highest grossing tour for a
solo musician, surpassing Madonna and Bruce Springsteen.
So it is no wonder that the show would be turned into a movie. It needs
to be said that Roger Waters should be thanked for stepping outside the
concert movie concept, adding a deep personal touch to the product.
Those people who already saw the Blu-ray praise its sound quality that
is conform to what we expect from a Floydian release, despite Waters'
obvious lip-synching on about half of the tracks.
And that is why the CD-version of The Wall live is such a disaster.
There are serious indications that some sound studio jerk took the
superior Blu-ray surround mix and simply downgraded it to stereo without
reworking the parts that make no sense when you only have got the audio
to rely on. Apparently making 459 million $ with The Wall tour didn’t
give Roger Waters enough pocket money to make a proper CD mix for this
release.
Riding the gravy train, or as the Sex Pistols named it: doing a rock 'n'
roll swindle, is something we are already familiar with in Pink Floyd
(and former EMI) circles. The
Anchor wrote in the past about scratched and faulty discs that were
put in those expensive deluxe sets (Fuck
all that, Pink Floyd Ltd. – 2011 12 02) and how the band and its
record company pretended to sell remastered albums while the music on
the CD was just goody good bullshit taken from an old tape (What
the fuck is your problem, Pink Floyd? – 2014 11 08). It makes us a
bit sad for all those fans who have bought the super
deluxe set of The Wall at 500 dollars a piece. The show must go on,
n'est-ce pas?
But anyone familiar with the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit knows lengthy
introductions are our trademark and it will not come as a surprise that
this article isn't about The Wall at all.
Buzz all night long
On Black
Friday, the 27th of November 2015, sightings were published on the
social media of an unannounced Pink Floyd 7-inch-vinyl-double-set that
had hit records shops in the UK. It was named 1965:
Their First Recordings and claimed to have the following tracks.
Record 1A: Lucy Leave
Record 1B: Double O Bo Remember Me
Record 2A: Walk with me Sydney
Record 2B: Butterfly I’m a King Bee
Composers: 1, 2, 3, 5: Syd Barrett 4: Roger Waters 6: Slim
Harpo
Personnel: Syd Barrett: Vocals, Guitar. Bob ‘Rado’ Klose: Guitar. Nick
Mason: Drums. Roger Waters: Bass, Vocals. Richard Wright:
Keyboards. Juliette Gale: vocals on Walk with me Sydney. (Some
pictures of the 'first' five man Floyd can be seen here: Pink
Floyd 1965.)
It was soon confirmed that the records were official, contrary to the
many bootlegs that already exist of the first and last track of the set,
and that it was a so-called 'copyright extension release'. According to
European law, sound recordings have a seventy years copyright, provided
that they are released within five decades. If the recording fails to be
published within 50 years it automatically becomes public domain, the
'use it or loose it'-clause, and that is something that The Floyd didn't
want to happen, especially not as there seems to be an Early Years
Immersion set on its way, predicted for the end of 2016.
That six tracks were released from the Floyd's first session(s) was
something of a surprise. Up till now, every biography only spoke of four
tracks put on tape. Let's see what Nick Mason had to say about it:
Around Christmas 1964, we went into a studio for the first time. We
wangled this through a friend of Rick’s who worked at the studio in West
Hampstead, and who let us use some down time for free. The session
included one version of an old R&B classic ‘I’m A King Bee’, and three
songs written by Syd: ‘Double O Bo’ (Bo Diddley meets the 007 theme),
‘Butterfly’ and ‘Lucy Leave’.
This was repeated in an August 2013 interview for Record Collector.
In Latin in a frame
However, in a letter to Jenny
Spires, presumably from late January, early February 1965, Syd
Barrett speaks about five tracks:
[We] recorded five numbers more or less straight off; but only the
guitars and drums. We're going to add all the singing and piano etc.
next Wednesday. The tracks sound terrific so far, especially King Bee.
At the bottom of this letter
Barrett also drew the studio setup with Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Robert
'Rado' Klose and himself ("Me. I can't draw me.").
The early sessions also appear in an (unpublished) letter to Libby
Gausden:
Tomorrow I get my new amp- Hooray! - and soon it's Christmas. (…) We're
going to record 'Walk With Me Sydney' and one I've just written '
Remember Me?', but don't think I'm one of those people who say they'll
be rich and famous one day, Lib.
In another letter he writes:
We just had a practice at Highgate which was OK. We're doing three of my
numbers – 'Butterfly', 'Remember Me?' and 'Let's roll another one', and
Roger's 'Walk with me Sydney', so it could be good but Emo says why
don't I give up cos it sounds horrible and he's right and I would, but I
can't get Fred [David Gilmour, note from FA] to join because he's
got his group (p'raps you knew!). So I still have to sing.
Tim Willis concludes in his Madcap biography that:
Sydologists will be astounded to learn that by '64, Barrett had already
written 'Let's Roll Another One', as well as two songs 'Butterfly' and
'Remember Me'.
This is slagged by Rob Chapman in A Very Irregular Head. According to
Chapman the letters date from December 1965, and not 1964, for reasons
that are actually pretty plausible.
Bob Klose told Random Precision author David Parker that he only
remembers doing one recording session with the Floyd late Spring 1965
and that he left the band in the summer of that year.
In other words, dating these tracks is still something of a mess. At the
Steve Hoffman forum the tracks were analysed by Rnranimal and he
concluded that the 6 tracks do not origin from the same source either,
so they could originate from different recording sessions. According to
him; tracks 1, 2 and 6 sound like tape and 3, 4 & 5 like acetate.
Legally all songs need to be from 1965, and not from December 1964, as
Mason claims in his biography, because... that would make these 1964
songs public domain and free to share for all of us. Perhaps the band
started recording in December 1964 but added vocals and keyboards a
couple of weeks later, in 1965. Surely an army of lawyers must have
examined all possibilities to keep the copyrights sound and safe.
Good as gold to you
1965: Their First Recordings is exactly what the title says. Never mind
the cover with its psychedelic theme as it is obviously misleading. In
1965 The Pink Floyd were still a British
Rhythm & Blues outfit and not in the least interested in
psychedelic light shows. Barrett tries hard to impersonate Jagger and
even uses an American accent on the songs. And not all songs are that
original either. We skip Lucy Leave and I'm a King Bee for the following
short review as they have been around for the past few decades.
Double O Bo is a pastiche of Bo Diddley's signature song,
but has a weird chord change that is inimitably Syd Barrett. Baby Driver:
It's a straight forward enough tip of the hat to Bo Diddley musically,
but then he throws in those two chords: F, G# which is something Bo
Diddley NEVER would have done. Syd was a genius. what would otherwise be
throwaway songs from a band in its infancy, make for compelling
listening due to his voice and his unique lyrics.
In Remember Me, the weakest song of the set, Syd strains his
voice so hard that it nearly sounds that someone else is singing (some
people claim it is Bob Klose and not Barrett). As Marigoldilemma remarks:
To me this one sounds like Syd trying to sound like Eric Burdon of the
Animals.
Walk with me Sydney, from Roger Waters and with Juliette Gale on
vocals, is a spoof of Roll
with me, Henry aka The Wallflower, written in 1955 by Johnny Otis,
Hank Ballard and Etta James. As it is not sure yet when Walk With Me
Sydney was exactly recorded this could – perhaps – even be a track
without Bob Klose. It is also the first time that we have a Roger Waters
lyrical list, a trick that he will repeat for the fifty years to come:
Flat feet, fallen arches, baggy knees and a broken frame, meningitis, peritonitis, DT's
and a washed out brain.
Medical Product Safety Information: Don't listen to this song if
you don't want it continually on repeat in your brain.
Butterfly is the surprise song of the set. This track shows the
potential Barrett had in him and could have been included, in a slightly
more mature version, on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. The lyrics are
pretty dark as well and typical Syd:
I won't squeeze you dead. Pin things through your head. I just
want your love.
Catch you soon
Not only was Parlophone
pretty vague about the recording dates, the record was also released
without any publicity and in very limited quantities, only 1050 copies
for worldwide distribution, including 350 for the UK. Not one of the
serious Pink Floyd fansites knew about the release and they were pretty
late diffusing the news, further proof these websites only publish what
Pink Floyd Ltd allows them to publish.
Pretty remarkable is that the Floydian fan-forums didn't really go into
overdrive about this set either and that the best comments and
information could be found on Steve Hoffman's Music
Corner. Yeeshkul had a pretty interesting thread as well, but this
was removed when people started discussing alternative ways of requiring
these tracks. It just makes one wonder how tight the grip is of the Pink
Floyd Gestapo Legal Council around Yeeshkuls' neck.
When it became clear that this edition was a) genuine and b) rare, prices
sky-rocketed. Hundreds of dollars were offered for a set and there have
been cases of record shop owners raising the prices for the copies they
still had in their racks. It needs to be said that a thousand copies for
a new Pink Floyd product is ridiculously low, even if it only interests
a small part of the Floydian fanbase.
Luckily for all those who didn't get a copy this is the age of the
internet and needle-drops can be found in harbours in silent waters
around us. Mind you, this is not psychedelic, nor classic dreamy Floyd,
but an R'n'B band in full progress, still looking for its own sound.
Vinyl collector Rick Barnes:
What I heard earlier was amazing ! Like the stones but sharper and more
original. They were a lot more together than I ever gave them credit.
I'm surprised they were not discovered in '65. Had they met Giorgio
Gomelsky or someone similar things might have been very different...
We end this post with an opinion from Mastaflatch at Neptune Pink Floyd:
With many bands such as Pink Floyd, who had been there for very long,
some people tend to forget the real crucial points when the band was
struck by genius and only find comfort in the familiar songs or familiar
patterns or familiar guitar solos. Between 1965 and 1967, something
major happened to PF and it's plain as day here. If not for Syd, it's
pretty likely that NOTHING of what we know and love from this band would
have reached our ears.
But, if you listen closely, the weirdness was already there in Syd's
chord changes and lyrics. (...) To get a band going though, especially
in the 60s when you had The Beatles leading the pack, you couldn't only
rely on blobs and gimmicks and Syd had what it took in spades: great
songs, fierce originality and a tendency to NOT rest on his laurels and
go forward.
I think that Pink Floyd, somewhere in the 70s ended up lacking at least
one of those attributes - mostly the latter and it only got worse as
time went on. I'm not saying that their later stuff wasn't good but at
some point, Pink Floyd ceased to invent its sound and became content to
play within its previously defined boundaries. Good music but far less
exciting.
In 1965 these boys were hungry, literally sometimes, and that is what
you hear. Their main preoccupation wasn't how to earn some 459 million $
turnover on a pre-recorded jukebox show from some 30 years before and it
shows.
Many thanks to: A Fleeting Glimpse Forum, Baby Driver, Rick Barnes,
Goldenband, Steve Hoffman Music Corner, Late Night Forum,
Marigoldilemma, Mastaflash, Göran Nyström, Neptune Pink Floyd Forum,
Rnranimal. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Pink
Floyd 1965 at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Tumblr page.
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Beecher, Russell &
Shutes, Will: Barrett, Essential Works Ltd, London, 2011, p.
152-153. Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber,
London, 2010, p. 56-57. Gausden Libby: Syd Barrett Letters.
Photographed by Mark Jones and published at Laughing Madcaps (Facebook). Geesin,
Joe: Acid Tates, Record Collector 417, August 2013, p 79-80. Mason,
Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books,
London, 2011 reissue, p. 29. Parker, David: Random Precision,
Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p. 1. Willis, Tim, Madcap,
Short Books, London, 2002, p. 43-44.
(Warning: this blogpost contains gratuitous nudity.)
Happy New Year, dear sistren and brethren, followers of
the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, we know these wishes come a tad too
late, but for us, Sydiots, the sixth of January is all that more
important, isn’t it?
Barrett’s seventieth birthday, as you probably know, was going to be
remembered with the launch of a renewed official website at www.sydbarrett.com,
under the supervision of Ian and Don Barrett and the help of some fans
who want to stay anonymous, except the one bloke who bragged about it on
that particular Whining Madcaps group we have long been blocked from.
Who is it who’s credited in 4 Syd books, spent months of (…) free time
collating photos of Syd and the early Floyd cos NO ONE else had done it
before, (…) has a credit at the end of the Technicolour Dream
documentary, was interviewed by Storm for his Syd film, helped Pink
Floyd’s manager with the original Syd website THEN was asked by Ian and
Don Barrett for (…) help with the new one.
Who you gonna call? Syd-busters! The rant goes on after that and
we seriously wonder why the man still hasn’t got a statue in that
cultural indifferent town that is Cambridge, instead of the one that is
going to be erected for Syd.
Caturday
Saturday the ninth saw two magical gatherings, one at the Geldart
in Cambridge and one at the Cirio
in Brussels. The one in Cambridge had the usual gang of Sydiots who
don’t want to be remembered of the madcap’s London exploits. The one in
Brussels was just an alcoholic debauchery between two webmasters and
their mutual adoration for ginger pussies, which is a far more
interesting starting point to, uhm..., start a conversation.
But, like we said, on the sixth of January of the year 2016 a new
official Syd Barrett website
was launched. It also immediately crashed which means that it either was
inundated by the amount of hits or that the chosen internet provider
happens to be a cheap and cheerful one who can’t handle more than a
dozen clicks per minute.
Apart from that the website
is a nice surprise, compared to the old one that already looked outdated
the day it was uploaded (and that had many wrong entries, including
wrong release dates for Syd's solo albums and examples of Stanislav's
dadaist fanart that crept into several sections). See: Cut
the Cake (2011) and/or Syd's
Official site gets a makeover (2010).
Much effort has been put into a short biographical Introduction
that tries to condense Syd's life into a readable article that won't
scare the fans away. While every Barrett scholar would probably
highlight other aspects of the madcap's life it is a nice treat, written
by someone who cares.
The Photo
section is what probably will attract most of the fans to the new site,
publishing many unseen portraits of the artist as a young man, hidden –
up till now - in private family albums. Obviously there are also
sections of the early Pink Floyd and Syd's solo years, nothing really
earth-shattering can be found in there (for the anorak, that is) but it
is a nice touch though that the pictures with Syd and Iggy (by Mick
Rock) have lost the legend that they were taken during the autumn of
1969. We don't see any Storm or Hipgnosis pictures in there but this
could be a coincidence...
A ridiculously wide menu banner (it looks cool on a smartphone though)
brings us to the Music
page where different songs will be analysed. For the launch it is Octopus
that gets the geek treatment, with – next to an introduction – Paul
Belbin's Untangling the Octopus essay, in a Julian Palacios
revision. It is great to see this 'Rosetta stone for decoding the
writing inspirations for one of Syd Barrett's most beloved songs' appear
on an official website.
Hidden underneath the introductory Syd Barrett Music page are four
sub-sections that are, at first sight, not entirely coherent and can be
easily missed.
Rocktopus
Syd's Recordings
gives an overview of his discography, Pink Floyd and solo, including
compilations and different formats. This list omits the 1992 Cleopatra
Octopus CD compilation (although you can mysteriously find its cover on
a different page) and also two early Pink Floyd compilations: The Best
Of The Pink Floyd (1970) and Masters Of Rock (1974). Obviously the Last
Minute Put Together Boogie Band release that was confiscated by Pink
Floyd, unaware of the fact that a second copy of the tape was still
hiding in a Cambridge cupboard, is nowhere to be found either.
Syd's Songs
publishes a complete list of Barrett's compositions, released and
otherwise, and it is a section that gives already much food for debate,
especially as an early Pink Floyd Immersion set could be in the make.
Dedicated
Albums tends to give an overview of tributes. It is a bit a
superfluous (and very incomplete) list, perhaps only added to do Men
On The Border the favour they deserve. Personally I don't understand
why the pretty ridiculous Vegetable Man Project is listed 6 times, but
the equally ridiculous Hoshizora
No Drive not. Closer to home I don't see Rich Hall's Birdie
Hop And The Sydiots, nor Spanishgrass
by Spanishgrass, appearing in the list.
Concert
Posters gives what the title says, but also here the list is pretty
random, although (early) Pink Floyd poster collectors are known to the
people coordinating this section of the website.
But we've seen things change rapidly, even for the past few days, so
when you read this some of these glitches may already have been repaired.
Enjoy (f)Art
Obviously there is also an Art
section on the site, divided into several sections: Student
Days, Later
Art, Notebooks
& Sketches (this section has some unseen pictures of Roger's notebooks)
and Syd's DIY
furniture (and his bike). The Fart Enjoy art-book is published as
well, but mentions that it was made in 1965, while it contains a pin-up
from a 1966 Playboy (don't pretend you didn't see it!) and refers to a
March 1966 Pink Floyd gig (see: Smart
Enjoy). But here we are meddling with muddy Sydiot territory again.
Last, but not least, there is a Barrett Books
entry. Also here it is all in the mind of the webmaster. Needless to say
that the 'classic' biographies in the English language have all been
mentioned, as well as other publications in a pretty arbitrary way.
London Live by Tony Bacon still makes it to the list. Other than the
picture on the front, this book has got no real connection to Syd
Barrett. It contains a history of London Clubs and the bands who played
there. Pink Floyd is mentioned, obviously, but so are a couple of
hundred other bands and artists.
The first two Mick Rock Syd Barrett photo books are included but not the
third one: Syd Barrett – Octopus - The Photography Of Mick Rock, EMI
Records Ltd & Palazzo Editions Ltd, Bath, 2010. There are other things
as well, like the weird way some Italian and French books make it to the
list and others don't, but this review is already messy enough.
Oh, by the way, there is a Links
page as well (that we nearly missed) but we will not spend another word
on it. Just check it for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
But it is a start all right, and one in the good direction. Things can
only get better.
Many thanks to: Anonymous, Paul Belbin, Mary Cosco, Stanislav Grigorev,
Rich Hall, Antonio Jesús, Göran Nyström, Julian Palacios. Untangling
the Octopus (version 3), by Paul Belbin & Julian Palacios can also be
consulted at the Holy Church: Untangling
the Octopus v3 (PDF). ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Yesterday I had the privilege of watching David
Gilmour perform at the historical marketplace of the small city of Tienen.
I'm very glad my LA-girl pushed me to get tickets as I was so
disappointed in his solo album I didn't even wanted to go. You can read
my review of the Rattle
That Lock (RTL) album at: Attack
the troll!
First Set
The concert started with three RTL-tunes and although they certainly
have more balls in a live rendition, it didn't really help me to get in
the mood. Actually I found the ambient-soundscape before the concert way
better. Rattle That Lock had lost the annoying sample it was
build around but that still doesn't make it a good song. What Do You
Want From Me gave the concert a necessary kick-start, but as it was
followed by The Blue the flow sank down like a soufflé that has
just been taken out of the oven. So far the concert had just been hot
air.
There was a second highlight with The Great Gig In The Sky with
excellent vocal work by the backing singers, two ladies and a man. David
Gilmour used the opportunity to say that the song had been written by
Rick Wright, forgetting the little fact this the concert was actually
taking place on Rick's birthday, but perhaps he had a valid reason as he
also had his wedding anniversary to remember the next day.
Understandably Great Gig was followed by A Boat Lies Waiting,
Gilmour's musical eulogy to his old friend, but although I appreciate
his honest effort to commemorate his friend it still is pretty average.
The set kept yoyoing between classics and RTL. Wish You Were Here,
followed by Money, then In Any Tongue, the only song on
his latest album that shows a momentarily glimpse of Floydian grandeur. High
Hopes finished the first set.
As far as I was concerned, I couldn't call this a good concert by now.
The general flow of the music was spoiled by the lesser RTL tracks,
dragging the Floydian classics down. I gave it a 65% rating and was
getting a bit depressed.
Second Set
But I also remembered my previous David Gilmour concert, in Amsterdam,
in 2006, where the public politely applauded after the obligatory bunch
of On
An Island, but not with much gusto. The second set, however was an eargastic
spectacle with Echoes. Of course, in those days, Rick was still moving
the Moog, getting a standing ovation from the crowd.
The second set could only be better, I braindamaged myself.
Luckily, it was.
Astronomy Domine hit my body like a cocaine snort. Fuck, fuck and
triple fuck. This was an entry with a big E. Shine On You Crazy
Diamond. Fat Old Sun. Then a drop down with Dancing Right
In Front Of Me, one of the unnecessary fillers on RTL. But the
upward momentum couldn't be stopped. Coming Back To Life was a
treat and On An Island couldn't spoil the good mood I was in
(that album is quite an intimate and exquisite jewel compared to Rattle,
if you ask me).
The Girl In The Yellow Dress is just a San Tropez throw-it-away
kind of song, so I just put my attention on things I could pick in my
nose.
It was finally time to work towards an apotheosis. First with the
obnoxious floor-filling disco of Today, that I loathed on the
record, but that seemed more or less to do its work here. If you have to
pick one memorable tune from A
Momentary Lapse Of Reason, it is without a doubt Sorrow.
Feeling the bass tones tremble in your stomach is a goosebumps
experience. Run Like Hell is one of the worst Pink
Floyd tracks if you ask me, but as a concert highlight it is.. well,
a highlight. This was not a Pink Floyd tribute band, this was the real
deal, helped by Mr. Brickman's
fabulous light and laser show and an ear-splitting volume that you
normally only have at Iron Maiden shows.
The second set also had its deal of yoyoing, but the last quarter made
my rating rise to 80%
Encores
The encores started with some ticking clocks, enough for the public to
go berserk. A drizzle had started at exactly the moment when Gilmour
sang 'outside the rain, fell dark and slow', but now it was pouring. (A
proof that this man has some connections at Valhalla.)
Lucky for me because so nobody could see the tears running from my face. Time
was given the full treatment with Breathe (Reprise) and
that seeded without a break into the song everyone was waiting for: Comfortably
Numb.
What can one say about Comfy? Let's say nothing about it as mortal
beings have not the words for it. Tongue-tied and twisted this
earth-bound misfit rated the encores at a whopping 110%.
Oops, you did it again, Gilmour. See you again in a decade.
Setlist
First set: 5am, Rattle That Lock, Faces Of Stone, What Do You
Want From Me, The Blue, The Great Gig In The Sky, A Boat Lies Waiting,
Wish You Were Here, Money, In Any Tongue, High Hopes.
Second set: Astronomy Domine, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Fat Old
Sun, Dancing Right In Front Of Me, Coming Back To Life, On An Island,
The Girl In The Yellow Dress, Today, Sorrow, Run Like Hell.
A photo-impression of the show can be found at the Church's Tumblr,
this page will be daily updated for about a week, so keep on visiting: David
Gilmour, Tienen.
Nine years ago the Reverend made the remark that any new Pink Floyd
release will create some 'controversy between the fans, the (ex-)band
members and/or record company' (Fasten
Your Anoraks).
Almost a decade later, with the release of Pink Floyd The Early Years
1965-1972, nothing has changed. Actually it only got worse.
Pink Floyd have always been a pretty hypocritical band when it comes to
making money. There is nothing bad about trying to make a good living,
obviously, but when you start selling inferior material for overabundant
prices it's like spitting the fans in their face. Not that anyone of
them would do that.
Of course nobody is obliged to buy The Early Years box (approx. 500 Euro
and limited to 28000 copies) but I duly admit: I am an absolute sucker
for anything with the Floyd name on it. And perhaps it's a nice pick-up
line: “Wanna see my Early Years box?”
Summaris/Ation
The Early Years is a somewhat directionless, but nevertheless
interesting, 28 CD, DVD and Blu-ray box containing demos, live tapes
(some of bootleg quality), unreleased tracks, rarities, vinyl singles,
movies and a 2016 remix of Obscured By Clouds. Someone must have said at
a direction committee: 'you know what, we haven't got enough material on
our Obfusc/Ation disk, let's throw in an Obscured By Clouds-remix'.
Not that you hear me complain, Obscured By Clouds is in my personal top
three, before Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall, but it does feel a bit
awkward.
Conceptualis/Ation
For this box, Pink Floyd didn't make the silly mistake of adding
marbles, scarves or toasters, like in the Immersion sets. There are
plenty of mini-posters, postcards, ticket replicas and other printed
items though, for those who like that. (Personally, I tend to ignore
that rubble.) An image of some of those, thanks to RobNl, can be found
on Imgur.
Another shot can be found at the Church's Tumblr: (Un)Packing
The Early Years #12.
The box has a simplistic, black and white theme, but is... too big. The
outside box is about 41 x 22 x 31 cm, but the actual set tucked inside
only takes 19 x 20 x 14.5 cm. It doesn't take an Einstein to calculate
that 80% of the box is made of... empty spaces. (Sorry, I really
couldn't resist that pun.) I have put the outside box on top of a
wardrobe, where it will probably stay for the rest of my miserable life.
Picture: (Un)Packing
The Early Years #6.
The 'inner box' contains 7 book-boxes, with ridiculously bombastic
cut/up names. 6 of those will be sold separately over the next few
months, the seventh is a bonus set, exclusive to this release alone.
That's why I was waving so enthusiastically with my wallet. Picture: (Un)Packing
The Early Years #14.
The one gadget everyone I have spoken to really wants, me included, is
the Pink Floyd 'matchbox' miniature van. Alas, these have been made for
promotional use only and will probably fetch high prices on eBay.
Update November 2016: meanwhile a Pink Floyd miniature van has
been sold on eBay for the whopping price of 310£ (385$, 364 €), Tumblr
link.
Miscre/Ation
The quality of the book-boxes is not optimal. On the web are already
circulating pictures of pages that are falling out of the sets.
Apparently they have been glued rather flimsily to the spine. Taking out
a disk is always a matter of trial and error, and the first CD I picked
broke one of the plastic 'teeth' holding it.
The inside pages contain pictures of the band, unfortunately the
printing is rather average, although the 'later' sets in my box seem to
be slightly better. Each set also contains a booklet with 'copyrights',
thank you notes, a brief introduction by Mark Blake and seven times the
same text by film archivist Lana Topham, for whatever reason, although I
suppose sloppiness from the editor. These texts are printed in grey on
brownish paper, making it nearly impossible to read them anyway.
If it breathes something, it breathes cheap instead of zen.
Expurg/Ation
When the box was announced, a couple of months ago, in the same
amateurish way The
Endless River was made public, the track-listing had some important
differences, as it listed 5.1 mixes for Meddle and Obscured By
Clouds. These can't be found on the released set (well, kind of) for
reasons that seem to be taken out of a Neighbours
episode.
It all starts with the fact that Pink Floyd has had several re-mixing
specialists over the years, notably James
Guthrie and Andy
Jackson, who, in true soap-series tradition, hate each-other's guts
as they belong to rivalling factions.
Andy Jackson, from the David Gilmour camp, was asked to create
the 5.1 mixes for Meddle and Obscured By Clouds and handed these over to Mark
Fenwick, who is Roger Waters' manager. Mark was a good dog
and passed these to Roger, for approval.
Roger Waters remembered that these remixes had originally been promised
to his protégé James Guthrie and when he found out that the 'other side'
had done these, without consulting him, he threw a tantrum like a kicked
poodle.
So this is, in a nutshell, why the genius of Pink Floyd vetoed against
the inclusion of the Andy Jackson 5.1 mixes, although liner notes and
promotion material had already been printed. All that had to be redone
and the 5.1 disks that had already been pressed were for the dustbin.
Before somebody could say 'several species of small furry animals' the
rift between the David Gilmour and Roger Waters camp was back in place
and it seems that it won't be solved in the near future.
Exacerb/Ation
So the Obscured By Clouds and Meddle 5.1 mixes are not in the box,
right? Wrong. Well, partially wrong.
It was found out that the 1971 Blu-ray contains a hidden segment with
the complete Meddle 5.1 mix. However, you can't play it on a regular
Blu-ray player as one needs to extract the files to a computer first (or
burn them on another Blu-ray with the hidden files set to visible).
Apparently this is not an Easter egg but a simple mistake. Or an act of
Insubordin/Ation. Take your pick. Instead of deleting the Meddle 5.1 mix
from the disk the Floyd's technical leprechaun only deleted the shortcut
from the menu.
Keep on smiling, people.
Tergivers/Ation
The week before the box got released there was an impromptu announcement
of the record company.
Pink Floyd fans ordering 'The Early Years 1965-1972’ will get an extra
piece of the band’s history.
The box-set will now also include a supplementary disc featuring the
band’s seminal Live At Pompeii concert as a 2016 audio mix.
The 6 tracks totalling over 67 minutes include live versions of 'Careful
With That Axe, Eugene', 'Set the Controls For The Heart Of The Sun',
'One of These Days', 'A Saucerful Of Secrets', ‘Echoes' and an
alternative take of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene’.
The truth is slightly different. When the sets were already made and put
in the boxes for shipping a bright brain decided it was about time to
check if the disks really contained what was printed on the booklets.
Only then it was found out that the Obfusc/Ation set did not have
Obscured By Clouds, but the Pompeii soundtrack. By then it was too late
to open 28000 shrink wrapped boxes and replace the disks, so the
Obscured remix was put in a carton sleeve and thrown on top of The Early
Years box set, before closing the brown shipping parcel. Picture: (Un)Packing
The Early Years #2.
At least the carton sleeve has the guts to say the truth:
REPLACEMENT CD DISC FOR OBFUSC/ATION PFREY6 – CD (STEREO
2016 MIX OF PINK FLOYD 'LIVE AT POMPEII' CD SUPPLIED IN ERROR)
Some quality control, huh? By the way, the 5.1 Obscured By Clouds mix is
not in the box, but you probably already figured that out.
Update: some boxes seem to come without the Obscured replacement
disk, as was expected...
(For those interested, the Pompeii CD contains an extra take of Careful
With That Axe, Eugene, but no Mademoiselle Nobs. The box also has the
Pompeii movie, without the interviews, without the singing dog, but in
the director's cut version, so I have read. Another Indic/Ation that the
Floyd team doesn't seem to know what lives in the fan community as that
version of the movie is mostly regarded as inferior to the original.)
Update: the new 'mix' of Obscured By Clouds is (to quote
Cenobyte) 'too top endy'. The mix generally repairs the muddiness of the
original mix and brings everything out in a brilliant way, but adds this
layer on top and that kind of ruins it. Some posters even think that
something went wrong during the mastering process. (The same applies to
the new Pompeii mix as well.)
Overvalu/Ation
Several Floydian movies can be found in the box, but some come without
English subtitles. This may not be a very big problem for More
but La Vallée is basically spoken in Frenglish. And of
course these boxes are shipped all over the world, to places were people
are not familiar with the English language and could use subtitles.
It only feeds the rumour that the Floyd randomly added things onto the
disks, just to fill them up, regardless of quality.
(Note: in my box, The Committee, that is on another Blu-ray than More
and La Vallée, does have subtitles, even in Dutch.)
Extenu/Ation
The Committee's soundtrack does not contain music from Pink Floyd alone.
One, pretty famous scene has underground colleague Arthur
Brown singing Nightmare,
but his name is not mentioned at all in the booklet. It is weird that a
band that scrutinises YouTube looking for copyright infringements
neglects Mr. Brown's rights.
As a matter of fact Pink Floyd even censored Nightmare from Arthur
Brown's personal YouTube place, a few months ago, because they claimed his
song hurt their copyrights. Unfortunately Arthur Brown doesn't
have a legion of lawyers to fight this.
Don't ask a slice of my pie, how utterly convenient.
Inculp/Ation
Some of the tracks on this Compil/Ation are from inferior or bootleg
quality. We know that and can live with that.
But what if we say that the Pink Floyd mastering team deliberately
ignored some good takes and put inferior ones in the box?
Seems unthinkable for a band that used to flirt with high-end
quadrophonic effects.
The 1967 BBC radio sessions, for instance, are in a bad quality,
examples are 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun', 'Reaction in
G' and 'Pow R Toc H' that is even incomplete.
It needs to be said that Pink Floyd consulted the official BBC archives
but these are in a bad state. The BBC had a habit of erasing their own
masters and only has copies of the Pink Floyd 1967 gig 'taken' from the
air.
Top collectors, those that have the 'holy grails', informed the Floyd
that (a copy of?) the masters of the 1967 recording are in a private
collection but the Floyd didn't find it necessary to check this out.
Andy Jackson received high quality stereo copies of the BBC recordings
from at least two sources but the powers that be decided to use the
inferior mono tapes instead.
Isn't is ironic that the 'bootleg' community has better versions of
these Pink Floyd live tapes and early acetates than the band itself and
that they are giving them away for free? The Floyd has thanked them by
shutting down Harvested and threatening to shutdown Yeeshkul in the
past. (More of these vicious rumours at: The
loathful Mr. Loasby and other stories... )
Finalis/Ation
Just as with the Immersion sets some Blu-rays come with errors, in this
case (as far as we know): the 1972 'Obfusc/ation' Blu-ray and bonus
package 'Continu/ation' Blu-ray 1. According to several testimonies the
menu screen loads, but halts there. You better check out your version
before it is too late.
Promulg/Ation
Fans were happy to find out that Seabirds was finally going to
find a place on this collection. Seabirds
is a song written by Roger Waters for the More movie, where it can be
heard during a party scene, but it does not appear on the soundtrack
album.
The song in the box though with the same title is not the one fans were
looking for but an alternate take of the instrumental Quicksilver.
God knows why this was erroneously labelled, but once again it seems
that the Floyd historians didn't do their homework right and just threw
songs on a CD without checking them out first.
Pink Floyd itself issued a statement, trying not to make it sound as an
apology. It appears that the master tape of the 'real' Seabirds was
given to the movie producers who used it for their final cut and who
destroyed the only copy afterwards.
While Pink Floyd is not to blame for that mishap we can at least say
they have been badly communicating to their fans about this track, but
Communic/Ation has never been the Floyd's strongest point.
(Another possible mistake can be found on the Stockholm disk where the
first instrumental number is titled Reaction In G while most
scholars think it is another 'untitled' instrumental, loosely based upon Take
Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk. This was already published by the
Church in 2011 so the Floyd had plenty of time to correct this. See
also: EMI
blackmails Pink Floyd fans!)
Evalu/Ation
At 500 Euro a box this is a pretty hefty Christmas present, especially
when you realise that at least 85% of the box has been circulating
before, on bootlegs. Of course it is true that some visual material has
been beautifully restored and some audio tracks sound crispier than
ever. Other tracks have just been added for the sake of adding them, so
it seems. Anything in the bin we can still use?
There are still plenty of tracks not in the box that the fans were
hoping for. It has already been confirmed that one of these will be
issued as a Vinyl Record Store Day exclusive.
Somehow I have the feeling that during the Cre/Ation of this set, that
took twenty years, the energy went lost, or the interest. Perhaps there
was a lack of time when the deadline came closer. Perhaps a greedy
manager decided that they had already spend too much money on it.
Perhaps Waters and Gilmour, and their servants Guthrie and Jackson, have
been busy rolling over the floor fighting, rather than working together,
in a cooperative way.
This could have been such an exquisite rarities box, an example for
other bands to follow, if only the Floyd had put some extra effort in
it, if only the Floyd had consulted their fanbase that gathers at
specialised music forums.
Nick Mason, the gentleman drummer, probably takes better care of his
cars than he takes care of his musical legacy.
"Those ungrateful fans, it took us 20 years to make this box and Felix
Atagong, the Reverend of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, just needed
20 minutes to trash it."
Update: this post was only published for about an hour when a new
'error' was published on one of the forums.
Belgian TV footage (1968): while the image transfer is great,
Pink Floyd made a stupid mistake by overdubbing the video with the
regular stereo versions instead of the original 'mono' sound. This leads
to the following errors: 1. The stereo Paintbox is about 15 seconds
shorter than the mono version, the last seconds of the clip are almost
silent while there was still music during the original TV broadcast. 2.
An unique early version of Corporal Clegg with an alternate ending has
been replaced with the common stereo version. 3. Set The Controls For
The Heart Of The Sun has lost the early mono mix that was used instead
of the album version.
Video transfers. Frame rates differ between 'vintage' movies and
digital technologies like DVD and Blu-ray. When old movies are
transferred to digital they have to be 'stretched' which is a pretty
straightforward process. However, one may not stretch the soundtrack the
same way because it will result in a sound distortion. Guess what, at
least one movie in the box runs with half a tone difference than
originally recorded.
So here is another case where bootlegs have it right and the official
version has it wrong. Bunch of amateurs!
There are really too many people to thank for this article, but much
kudos go to Ron Toon and the dozens of others who gave valuable
information on the Steve
Hoffman Music Forum (304 pages!), another thread on the Steve
Hoffman Forum (72 pages!), Yeeshkul
(161 pages!) and A
Fleeting Glimpse (106 pages!). Sleeve illustrations by a forum
member whose post I can't find back any more, anyway thanks!
20 pictures of the (un)packing of the box can be found at the Church's
Tumblr: The
Early Years.
This article started as a review of Psychedelic
Celluloid by Simon Matthews but ended up as a long-read about Pink
Floyd at the movies. Sorry, I can't help it. (This article does not
pretend to describe all Pink Floyd related movies.)
I got a mail, a couple of months ago, from Simon Matthews, saying that
he was working on a book that would explore the interaction between
(psychedelic) pop music and British movies, in the golden era that was
Swinging London. Not really coming as a surprise he added that Pink
Floyd would figure in it a couple of times. I made a mental note to
check it out, but like so many things it got lost in the dark corners of
my soul. Call it divine intervention, or just a case of serendipity, but
when Brain
Damage did a short write-up of the publication it all came back to
me and ten minutes later my Kindle was purring with joy.
Matthews starts his book by mentioning George
Melly’s Revolt Into Style, a collection of sixties
essays that has been borrowed from in all self-respecting Swinging
London books in the past forty years. His introduction ends with the
ad-hoc announcement that the most prominent ‘movie’ music performers
between 1965 and '74 were not The Beatles, nor The Rolling Stones, but,
yes, you’ve already guessed it: (The) Pink Floyd.
During my four decades long love/hate relationship with the band I have
trodden many paths, some narrower than others, and so it may not come as
a surprise to you that I have also tried to acquire some information on
the lads in movieland. We all know that several members of the Cambridge
mafia, revolving around the band, were dabbling into film: Nigel
Lesmoir-Gordon, Mick
Rock, Anthony
Stern, Storm
Thorgerson to name just a few.
It happily surprised me that, in the chapter ‘Set the Controls for the
Heart of W1!’, Matthews is casually mentioning that the Floyd’s music
can also be found on two kung
fu flicks: ‘Fist of Fury’ and ‘Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan’.
I am familiar with those as well as my quest into Floyd in filmland has
brought me to the weirdest places. Did you know there is a Syd Barrett
presence in a Freddy
Mandingo movie? Well, let me tell you, you really don't want to know.
唐山大兄 Tang Shan Da Xiong (The
Big Boss) is a (fairly stupid) 1971 Hong Kong movie that put a
fairly unknown martial artist into the spotlight. Bruce
Lee plays a somewhat dorky fellow, revenging the murders on his
relatives, who found out the local ice factory is being used for drugs
smuggling.
When the movie arrived in an American version it was retitled as Fists
Of Fury, creating a mess for generations to come as there would be
another Bruce Lee movie the next year called Fist Of Fury (without the
s). Perhaps it was the other way round, as even Wikipedia isn't really
sure which is which (and neither does Simon Matthews). Most of the world
calls the movie The Big Boss, except for Germany, who like to give the
plot away and baptised it Die Todesfaust des Cheng Li (The deadly
fist of Cheng Li).
Not only the title gives food for confusion. The movie has been issued
in half a dozen of different versions with entirely different
soundtracks.
A first music score was composed by Wang Fu-ling for the (original)
Mandarin release. It is believed Cheng Yung-yo assisted with that
soundtrack, although uncredited. This movie was horribly dubbed into
English for a limited run in the Anglo-Saxon world.
A second soundtrack was made by German composer Peter
Thomas when the movie was re-cut and re-dubbed for the international
market. This 1973 westernised version had several erotic and gory scenes
deleted, including the legendary scene where Bruce Lee cuts an
adversary's head in two halves with a saw.
A third soundtrack, using the international cut, was arranged by Joseph
Koo, for a Japanese release, probably around 1974.
A fourth soundtrack for a Cantonese release in 1983 combines the Joseph
Koo score (#3) with the one of Peter Thomas (#2) and adds incidental
'stock' music. This one includes snippets from Pink Floyd and King
Crimson (Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part Two).
Cut Into Little Pieces
An overview of Pink Floyd music in The
Big Boss, thanks to the Martial
Arts Music Wiki, with (dead) links to the exact sequence. Contains
some minor spoilers.
Obscured by Clouds (1972, Obscured by Clouds) Cheng Chao-an
(Bruce Lee) and his cousin Hsiu are being followed by casino bouncers (13:05). Repeated
when Hsiao Mi (the big boss), his son Chiun and some henchmen are
training (26:35).
Time (1973, The Dark Side of the Moon) Hsiu and his brother
visit the big boss at his mansion, trying to find out why two of their
family members have disappeared (29:05). Chen
Chao-an (Bruce Lee) is invited for a meeting with the ice factory's
manager (47:50). Chen
Chao-an visits the big boss to find out why four of his relatives have
disappeared (01:06:14).
Time / The Grand Vizier's Garden Party (Entertainment)
(1969, Ummagumma) Mixed together this can be heard when Hsiu and his
brother try to escape from Mi's killer squad (31:58).
As far as we know, the Floydian soundtrack was only available on a
Cantonese 1983 re-release, explaining that a 1973 song anachronistically
appears on a 1971 movie. It isn't certain if the Pink Floyd tracks were
properly licensed as they are not mentioned on the end credits. To add
insult to injury other cuts of the movie - with alternative 'hybrid'
soundtracks and extra or longer scenes - have circulated, so it is all
rather messy. For a (partial) comparison of the different versions: Big
Boss @ Movie Censorship.
Update November 2022: a very detailed description of the
different versions of the movie and its soundtracks can be found on
IMDB: The
Big Boss (1971) - Alternate Versions.
Bruceploitation
Bruce Lee died unexpectedly in 1973 and the posthumous documentary The
Man and the Legend (original title: Li Xiao Long di Sheng yu si)
contains next to the King Crimson piece that was already mentioned
above, Pink Floyd's One of These Days (1971, Meddle) and On The Run
(1973, The Dark Side of the Moon).
After 1973, several Bruceploitation movies were made, often with a
conspiracy theme. Tian Huang Ju Xing (Exit
the Dragon, Enter the Tiger) from 1976 is not different and has
actor Bruce
Li (real name: Ho Chung Tao) fighting his way through some shady
drug deals in something that will not be remembered as a great martial
arts movie. Even the soundtrack borrows completely from others and has
next to Isaac Hayes and John Barry, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (1975).
A decade before The Big Boss (1983 cut) another kung fu movie had found
out about the martial strength of Pink Floyd.
愛奴 Ai Nu, awkwardly renamed for the western market as Intimate
Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, is a 1972 Hong Kong movie about
the 18-year old Ai Nu who is kidnapped from her family and brought to
the governor's brothel.
After the default set of humiliations and punishments she apparently
accepts her fate and learns the noble art of self-defence from 'madam'
Chun Yi. Once a kung fu champ she uses her seductive powers to eliminate
her wrongdoers, one by one.
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is a mixture of blood
vengeance, lesbian sensualism (in covert seventies style) and it has
been named as one of the inspirational landmarks for Quentin
Tarantino's Kill
Bill. Every scene looks so artificially crisp it nearly hurts the
eyes and if Walt
Disney ever makes a movie set in a brothel this is certainly how it
will look like. Undoubtedly a seventies classic, director Yuen
Chor (Zhang Baojian) can, without doubt, be placed next to Borowczyk,
Fellini
or Pasolini.
Another one bites the dust
Unfortunately the original soundtrack can't really decide between
traditional Chinese and Tex-Mex western style tunes. Two Pink Floyd
tracks of the 1970 Zabriskie Point soundtrack are prominent in
three decisive scenes. (The links given here point to a very bad copy,
dubbed in English, with terrible sound.)
Come In Nr. 51 (Your Time is Up) Ai Nu has just been tortured
by Chun Yi, who promptly falls in love with her (link). After
the final duel, when Ai Nu kisses her dying lover goodbye (link).
Heart Beat, Pig Meat A few seconds of Heart Beat, Pig Meat at
43 minutes when Ai Nu and her lesbian lover openly discuss the first
murder (not present on the YouTube version). (The DVD has a
documentary about the movie that uses the Zabriskie soundtrack even
more, by the way.)
In Psychedelic Celluloid, Simon Matthews writes that Pink Floyd can be
heard in two kung fu movies, but there is more, much more...
The Kung Fu Magazine forum
has a 47-pages thread with, at the time of writing, 643 verified tracks
(of different composers, bands and artists) that have been used, legally
or illegally, in dozens of films. Sometimes the songs are used in its
entirety, but often snippets of a second or less have been 'sampled'
into the soundscape. Venomous Centipede at shaolinchamber36.com
came up with the following impressive Pink Floyd list. All Hong Kong or
Taiwan movies with a Pink Floyd soundtrack (Updated January 2019):
April Fool
Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up - Zabriskie Point
Bedevilled, The
Echoes - Meddle
Deadly Chase, The *
(aka Zhui sha, Impact 5, Karate Motos - 1973) Mudmen - Obscured
By Clouds (* added by ShawFan17)
Chinatown Capers
The Grand Vizier's Garden Party – Ummagumma When You're In
- Obscured By Clouds
Delinquint, The
The Grand Vizier's Garden Party – Ummagumma Astronomy
Domine - Ummagumma
Fist of Unicorn *
One of These Days - Meddle (* added by: OldPangYau.)
Gambling For Gold
The Grand Vizier's Garden Party - Ummagumma Astronomy Domine -
Ummagumma Atom Heart Mother - Atom Heart Mother
Happenings, The
Echoes - Meddle Absolutely Curtains - Obscured By Clouds
Hunchback, The
One of These Days - Meddle
Kung Fu Inferno
Echoes - Meddle
Legends of Lust
Heart Beat, Pig Meat - Zabriskie Point
Marianna *
(aka Bin Mei, 1982) Obscured By Clouds - Obscured By Clouds (*
added by Panku)
Ninja Warlord *
Echoes - Meddle One Of These Days - Meddle (* added by Dithyrab)
Operation White Shirt
Time - Dark Side of the Moon On the Run - Dark Side of the Moon
Pier, The
Time - Dark Side of the Moon
Roaring Lion, The
One of These Days - Meddle
Tales of Larceny
Careful With That Axe, Eugene
Tiger Jump
Time - Dark Side of the Moon
Training Camp
Atom Heart Mother - Atom Heart Mother
Wits to Wits *
(aka Lang bei wei jian , From China with Death, Con Man and the Kung
Fu Kid) Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun - A Saucerful
of Secrets (* added by Jimbo)
Young Rebel, The
Time - Dark Side of the Moon On the Run - Dark Side of the Moon
So prepare a big bag of popcorn if you want to check these out.
Update November 2022: many thanks to Kung Fu Fandom for
mentioning our blog on their Floyd soundtrack list.
Let’s get back to Simon Matthews’ Psychedelic Celluloid. After the
introduction and a chapter dedicated to Pink Floyd the main bulk of the
book consists of a chronological listing of about 120 movies, starting
with Richard Lester’s The
Knack (1965) and ending with Stuart Cooper’s Little
Malcolm and his struggle against the Eunuchs (1974), described by
some as the most expensive home movie ever made as it could only be seen
at George Harrison’s place.
There is nearly a movie on every page, with a picture, a short
description, some info on the director, the actors and its soundtrack,
but that is exactly where the cookie crumbles, as this information is
almost identical to what you can already find on IMDB
and Wikipedia.
The author could've added more anecdotes or juicy rumours if you ask me.
Take Performance,
for instance, not a word about the orgies and the drugs in front and
behind the camera, as Iggy Rose once testified on this holy place (see: Iggy
& the Stones). But of course, books have already been written
about that movie alone.
Several times when I was at the point of saying 'this is starting to get
interesting' the article ends and makes place for another one, leaving
my hunger unsatisfied. The intriguing story of the (disappeared) movie Popdown
is a perfect example. Starring Zoot
Money, with music of Brian Auger, Blossom Toes, Dantalion's Chariot,
Julie Driscoll, Gary Farr and a couple of others. Its history is so
fascinating that it could easily have taken six pages, but it stops at
two. After reading that entry I spend a good hour browsing the Internet
for more information, reading about a maniacal fan, Peter
Prentice, who nearly spend a fortune trying to locate a surviving
copy. Unfortunately I never found out if he succeeded in his mission, or
failed. Perhaps that is what Simon Matthews really wants as I'm pretty
sure he knows more about these movies than he was allowed to write. And
the beauty of this guide is that it assembles a list of 120 'flower
power' films in the first place.
The Pink Jungle
Pink Floyd are the uncrowned champions of the 'pop' movies during the
psychedelic heyday, roughly from the mid-sixties till the mid-seventies,
and that despite the fact that they even rejected a soundtrack for
Kubrick. (Even more of a surprise is that Amon
Düül ends second.) I count 26 Pink Floyd entries in the
book and 5 for Syd Barrett. Let's have a nerdy look through our pink
tinted glasses, shall we?
This movie is only mentioned in one of the appendixes of the book.
Starring Brigitte
Bardot it is the story of a model, with a photo shoot assignment in
London, who has to choose between her husband and a much younger
passionate toy boy. This was Bardot's first attempt to excel in a
serious movie, away from the sex kitten romantic comedies she had done
before. Probably that could be the reason why the public didn't want to
see it, but critics say the movie tried to look sophisticated but ended
up pretty dull. Next to BB two English popstars play a small role: Murray
Head and Mike
Sarne, who had a number one hit in 1962 with Come
Outside.
In a 2015 BBC documentary 'Wider Horizons' it was revealed that David
Gilmour sang two tracks for the movie, composed by Michel
Magne: Do
You Want To Marry Me? and I
Must Tell You Why. This was before he joined Pink Floyd and that is
perhaps why Psychedelic Celluloid isn't aware of this.
The Holy Church Tumblr blog has several links to the songs and the movie
itself: À
Coeur Joie.
Simon Matthews throws an ace with the news that The
Touchables has Interstellar Overdrive during one of its scenes,
something that – as far as I know – has never been put in a Floydian
biography before. It is one of those thirteen in a dozen, throwaway, sex
comedies with a plot 'thinner than a paper towel'.
Four good-looking beauties, who like to walk around in their underwear
and who are literally living in a bubble, kidnap a wax sculpture of Michael
Caine and then repeat the act with a popular pop singer, whom they
abuse as a sex slave, not that he resists a lot. After having a go at
the four of them he finally tries to escape but they shoot him down. The
situation looks grim for a minute, but even that can't spoil the fun. It
all looks like one of the less interesting Monkees shows.
Add a subplot with a few gangsters and, for an incomprehensible reason,
some professional wrestlers and you have a product that creates
immediate amnesia after watching it.
The story was written by Donald
Cammell who would later enlarge some of its situations for
Performance.
The
Committee entry has one of Mick Rock's pictures with Syd Barrett
standing in front of his Pontiac
Parisienne - more of that car later (obviously) - which I found a
bit weird, even for a Barrett buff like me.
Then it occurred to me that Barrett had first been asked to compose its
soundtrack, without the Floyd. The reason is not entirely clear, maybe
Barrett was thought to be cheaper than the entire band, maybe Peter
Jenner wanted to give Syd's solo career a boost (although he was
officially still in the band), maybe it was believed that Syd would
better understand the movie's philosophy, inspired by the theories of R.D.
Laing. Whatever...
On the 30th of January 1968, a couple of days after the Floyd – now with
David Gilmour - 'forgot' to pick Syd up for a gig, he arrived one and a
half hour late at Sound Techniques without a guitar and without a band.
A guitar was found, Nice-drummer Brian
'Blinky' Davidson and Barrett-buddy Steve
Peregrin Took were presumably called in and five and a half hours
later a twenty minutes music piece was in the can. Unfortunately Barrett
thought it sounded better backwards so at midnight they called it a day
and all went home.
The collaboration with Barrett was stopped because his studio time was
too expensive and their budget was practically zero. Syd didn't show any
further interest for the project either and when a studio employee tried
to phone him there was 'nobody home'. Roger Waters heard about the
fiasco and agreed to do the soundtrack with the rest of the band, minus
Syd, in an improvised studio for practically nothing. Max Steuer in Sparebricks:
The address was 3, Belsize Square, London NW3, the basement flat of the
painter Michael
Kidner and his wife Marion. (…) It was amazingly professional.
Steuer remembers that Syd's piece was 'jazzy, with a groove' and that
Peter Jenner took the tape with him. In 2014 we asked Jenner about the
whereabouts of this 'holy grail'. Peter Jenner in The Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit innerview:
As far as I know I am not in possession of these tapes, I might have
been given a copy, but surely not the masters. (…) Many things
disappeared with the sudden collapse of Blackhill. My recollection is
that they were less than amazing. However if I come across anything I
will let you know.
The Committee is now part of Pink Floyd's Early Years box set, without –
of course – the Syd Barrett tape. Unfortunately Psychedelic Celluloid
was already in the can when that set was released and several times the
author states that a Pink Floyd soundtrack has not been officially
released, while some of it can now be found on the luxury box set.
Update 2017: in our next article we dig deeper into The Committee
soundtrack, with a remarkable theory from Simon Matthews: The
Rhamadan – Committee Connection
There is no immediate link with Pink Floyd in The
Magic Christian, but Gretta
Barclay and her boyfriend Rusty Burnhill worked on it. Gretta
Barclay in the interview she gave at the church:
We did some film extra work for The Magic Christian. I have a feeling
Iggy came with us? But I cannot confirm this.
As the movie was shot in March 1969, Iggy could indeed have been around.
It wouldn't be the first time that Iggy was on a film set, nor the last.
Another Syd Barrett friend made it even in front of the camera. One of
Raquel Welsh's topless slave girls in the galleon scene was none other
than Jenny Spires, but she didn't make it to the final cut, so don't
ruin your eyes looking for her.
How could we forget More?
This Barbet Schroeder movie follows the hippie trail to Ibiza, but
instead of sea, sun and illicit sex it adds the deadly ingredient of
heroin. Pink Floyd wrote the soundtrack.
There are some differences between the music on the album and the songs
in the movie. 'Main Theme' lacks some guitar and 'Cymbaline' has
alternate lyrics and is sung with a 'head voice'. The movie also
contains a short instrumental 'Hollywood' that is not on the album. The
Early Years compilation includes an early version of this track, titled
'Song 1'.
The song that has made fans go crazy for almost five decades is
'Seabirds'. It is a pastoral hymn à la Grantchester Meadows, but
unfortunately it can only be heard during a party scene in the film.
When Pink Floyd announced that 'Seabirds' was included in The Early
Years box this was considered as one of those great revelations everyone
was hoping for. Unfortunately the song in the box was not 'Seabirds',
but an alternate take of the instrumental Quicksilver. Apparently the
master tape of the 'real' Seabirds was given to the movie producers who
used it for their final cut and who destroyed the only copy afterwards.
Simon Matthews overzealously implies that Pink Floyd did the soundtrack
for The
Body, although it was a co-operation between Ron
Geesin and Roger Waters (who can be found on 8 tracks of 22). One of
these, Give
Birth To A Smile, was recorded with the entire band, but it was
credited as a Roger Waters solo effort. (Give Birth To A Smile was
considered for inclusion on The Early Years box, but at the end it
didn't happen.)
Psychedelic Celluloid also states that:
The majority of the music was assembled from sounds made by the human
body – burps, farts, coughs, sneezes, heartbeats, human voices, general
stomach noises, etc. (p. 132)
Described by the author as a considerable tour de force of bad taste he
rightfully notes that Georgie Fame wrote the soundtrack, but he fails to
say that the most important actor of the film, a Pontiac
Parisienne with numberplate VYP 74, first belonged to Mickey
Finn and later to Syd Barrett. It would have been a fun anecdote.
During the making of the soundtrack of La
Vallée, so tells us Nick Mason, there was a (financial)
misunderstanding between Pink Floyd and the film company. The band
removed the title from the album and called it Obscured By Clouds
instead. But for once Pink Floyd didn't have the last laugh as the movie
was immediately sub-titled Obscured By Clouds for the English market.
Perhaps the weirdest thing is that Matthews finds La Vallée (Obscured by
Clouds) a well made film with excellent photography. That last one is
certainly true but most of the world is still trying to find out what
the hell the story was all about. La Vallée regularly makes it into
'worst movies of all times' lists.
Throughout Psychedelic Celluloid the author duly notes when a rock or
pop star occupies a (minor) role in a film. However, for La Vallée he
overlooked the fact that Miquette
Giraudy, wife of Steve Hillage, member of Gong and System 7, is
playing the part of Monique.
The last part of the book has several entries that didn't make it to the
central part, for one reason or another. Appendix 1 (fiction)
mentions Zabriskie Point, not a London based movie, and the French À
Coeur Joie (see above). Appendix 2 (documentaries
and concert films) has Pink Floyd in Dope (1968) and Sound Of The City
(1973). Appendix 3 (shorts) lists Peter Whitehead's London '66-'67
with Pink Floyd playing the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream. Appendix 4
(TV specials, documentaries & concerts) mentions the Belgian 'Pink
Floid' special that has been unfortunately released on the Early Years
with the wrong soundtrack.
One category that can't be found in this pretty coherent and detailed
work are the many (perhaps too many) underground and avant-garde movies,
for instance from the London film-makers' co-operative LFMC,
started in 1966 by Stephen
Dwoskin, Bob
Cobbing and others in the legendary Better
Books shop. Carolee
Schneemann's Viet
Flakes (1965) that puts happy pop songs over Vietnam images isn't
there, nor is Malcolm
Le Grice's Berlin
Horse (1970) with a Brian Eno soundtrack and – oblesse oblige -
neither is Iggy, Eskimo Girl from Anthony
Stern that has See Emily Play. But avant-garde art movies probably
belong more in specialised studies for a specialised clientele (and at
special rates, Oxford University wanted me to pay £119 to consult an
article).
On three different occasions Simon Matthews mentions a Spanish movie
that claims to include on its soundtrack a rearrangement by Jorge Pi of
a Pink Floyd arrangement of Richard Strauss' Salome. Somewhat
exasperated he adds 'if anyone ever finds a copy and manages to
investigate'...
Well it is not that the Church didn't try.
In 1970 Rafael
Gassent, the 'father' of indepent Valencian cinema, made a 51
minutes adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play and Richard Strauss opera Salomé.
According to the IMDb movie database the soundtrack is composed by
Richard Strauss, arranged by Pink Floyd and re-arranged by Jorge Pi.
Rafa Gasent, also known as Rafael Gassent and all combinations in
between, is an experimental Spanish movie maker whose 23 and some movies
are even more difficult to track down than those of Anthony Stern.
Salome was allegedly shot in the Sagunto
castle, inspired by the Andy Warhol school of filming and is
apparently a blend of the hippie era and Spanish avant-garde 'grunge'
from the early seventies. No wonder that these experimental directors
weren't liked by general Franco and his Opus Dei cohorts and that these
movies were only shown in underground clubs. Rafael Gasent would later
work for Spanish television and his cinematographic work is now and then
shown on movie festivals.
Obviously the Holy Church tried to find out what this 'arranged by Pink
Floyd' means at the end credits of the Salome movie, but we couldn't
find a copy to check if it is really there or not.
The Church also asked Rafael Gasent Garcia for information, in English
and in Spanish, but unfortunately posting holiday pictures is a more
interesting activity for him than sparing a minute for some quick
comment.
So until somebody clears this up, there is a kind of enigma here.
Unless...
Update 2019 05 18: The reason why this movie can't be found
nowadays is because all copies were seized by the Spanish censorship
administration in the nineteen seventies. For an update, please check: Salome
Unveiled.
Pinfloy
This doesn't mean that the Church doesn't have a theory. Personally I
think it was nothing but a youthful joke, like the Spanishgrass
hoax, and that Gasent didn't use Pink Floyd as a bandname but 'pinfloy'
as a noun.
Just like the Dutch language had the term 'beatle' in the sixties, for a
long-haired no-good (my mother used it all the time to shout at me), the
term 'pinfloy' was introduced in Andalusia in the seventies as an
equally pejorative term. A 'pinfloy', to paraphrase Antonio Jesús, is
somebody who acts silly, crazy, or who is quite gullible, naive and/or a
bit rare.
In underground and artistic circles however, 'pinfloy' may have been
re-appropriated and stripped from its derogatory meaning although it was
still used for alternative people from the wackier side of the spectrum.
If Jorge Pi (or Jordi Pi) is indeed the musician of the Desde
Santurce a Bilbao Blues Band, as Simon Matthews writes, this all
starts to make sense. The DsaBBB were a satirical band, who weren't from
Bilbao to start with and who didn't play the blues either. The band
mixed rock, charleston, folk, tango and forms of classical music,
combined with humorous lyrics. This was not always appreciated by the
Franco regime and in one case they were even arrested.
So, to get this over with once and for all, the Salome soundtrack may
not contain a Pink Floyd arrangement but a Jorge Pi 'pinfloy' treatment
of Richard Strauss, meaning that the Richard Strauss melody was given a
goofy swing.
Case closed then, unless somebody else comes up with a more coherent
theory.
Salomé 1970 -2017
Around 2015 Gasent revised, re-imagined and reconstructed a new version
of this lost movie, using material that could be traced back in several
archives. The 18 minutes short (14 minutes without credits) was shown on
the Mostra de València - Cinema del Mediterrani festival in October 2018
and has been published on YouTube as well.
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit has written an article about this
version at: Salome
Unveiled.
(Back to contents, top of the page.)
Psychedelic Celluloid (conclusion)
Psychedelic Celluloid is an excellent vade mecum, a quick reference
book, for those that are interested in the interplay of British bands
and movies of the psychedelic years. The description of the individual
titles could have been more detailed at points, but somewhere I have the
feeling that the author wants us, the reader, to move our lazy ass and
go look for it ourselves. As a whole, bringing these 120 titles together
in one volume is already a gargantuan task. Mission accomplished then.
La Marge (1976)aka The Streetwalker, aka Emmanuelle '77,
aka Emanuela '77.
Here is a movie that isn't mentioned in Psychedelic Celluloid, for
obvious reasons. First: the setting takes place in Paris, not in London.
Second: it was made outside the 'swinging London' decade, covered in the
book. Still it is a must-see for people who want to know more about
Floyd in film.
There is a French comedy about a film director who sells his dramatic
script to a movie studio and finds out that he is expected to make a
porn flick instead. This
is exactly what happened to Walerian
Borowczyk whose filmography evolved from art-house avant-garde to
European soft-core, including the almost parodical Emmanuelle
V in 1986.
Borowczyk started with ingenious stop motion and animations and shocked
the public (and the censors) with the live action Immoral
Tales (1974), The
Story of Sin (1975) and The
Beast (1975), movies that acquired a cult status and that placed him
next to contemporary directors as Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski.
These directors didn't avoid experiment either but were popular while
Borowczyk was only known to a small circle of critics and movie buffs.
For his next production he wanted to go for something less shocking and
more accessible...
All the necessary ingredients for a successful product were there: •
Andy Warhol superstar and beautiful boy Joe
Dallesandro, hot in France after appearing in Serge Gainsbourg's
movie Je
t'aime moi non plus, was hired for the male lead role. • Sylvia
Kristel was the female lead. Although remembered as a sex-goddess,
she was actually an excellent much-wanted actress and Europe's
box-office queen (thanks to the Emmanuelle franchise). • A top-score
soundtrack was assembled with French songs, old and new, and
international hits by 10CC (I'm Not In Love), Elton John (Saturday
Night's Alright (For Fighting)), Sailor (Glass of Champagne) and Pink
Floyd (Shine On You Crazy Diamond). • Bernard
Daillencourt was the cinematographer and his work for Borowczyk was
so appreciated that David Hamilton hired him for his flimsy but utterly
lucrative erotic trilogy: Bilitis, Laura and Tendres Cousines. Actress
Camille Lariviere would also figure in Bilitis. • The original novel,
from writer André
Pieyre de Mandiargues, had won the Prix
Goncourt for the best novel of 1967. He had also written The
Girl on a Motorcycle, put to film with Alain Delon and a young
Marianne Faithfull.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
La
Marge is a dramatic mixture of love, death, adultery, suicide and
full frontal Euro-chic. A rich and handsome vine-grower, madly in love
with his family, visits a brothel on a business trip to Paris. After the
obligatory nookie he receives a letter that his son has drowned in the
swimming pool and that his wife has taken her own life. Instead of
returning home for the double funeral the widower tries to cope with the
tragedy by visiting the prostitute who feels that something basically
has changed in his, and her, attitude.
About everything was present to make this movie the autumn box-office
hit of 1976 but La Marge sank without a trace. The blowjob scene, with
Shine On You Crazy Diamond on the background, should have been tattooed
in our brains, like Marlon Brando's butter extravaganza in Last Tango In
Paris. To cash in on Kristel's fame the movie was renamed (and
re-dubbed) as Emmanuelle '77 (or Emanuela 77) but that only added to the
confusion. It has been rumoured that new scenes, filmed by another
director without the knowledge of Borowczyk, were added for an American
cut, known as The Streetwalker, but nobody has ever managed to compare
both versions.
The soundtrack, with 10CC, Elton John and Pink Floyd, may have been the
reason why the movie has never became a cult classic in later years.
Pink Floyd's legal stubbornness, so is whispered, has prevented a
general release on DVD. A Japanese version does exist, with several
blurs at strategic places, and there also floats a French Canal+ copy
around, omitting a few (voyeuristic) scenes.
The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit Tumblr has some pictures: La
Marge.
While I would give the book Psychedelic Celluloid a seven rating (out of
ten) for its contents, I am somewhat disappointed in the Kindle edition.
The book, as a traditional book, is beautifully printed, with a lot of
white-space next to the text to include pictures in a separate column or
to interact with the text as in the 'Magic Christian' example at the
left.
However, the Kindle version does not allow in-text searching, nor adding
notes, nor changing the font size. On my medium sized tablet screen
(10.81 by 6.77 inches / 27.46 × 17.20 cm) the letters are the size of
miniature ants due to the fact that every page can only be shown in its
entirety. The picture legends have golden letters on a white background
and are completely unreadable (you can't change the background colour
either, as in other Kindle books).
Reading the Kindle version of Psychedelic Celluloid is like reading a
badly xeroxed book but with the one difference that on good old
photocopies you could still scribble some notes.
I would like to say to Oldcastle Books and/or Amazon this is a fucking
disgrace and that you only bring the author's reputation down with this
kind of crap.
Still a good book though.
Simon Matthews Psychedelic Celluloid Oldcastle Books, 2016. 224
pages.
The Church wishes to thank: Gretta Barclay, Vanessa Flores, Stanislav
Grigorev, Rich Hall, Peter Jenner, JenS, Antonio Jesús, Göran Nyström,
OldPangYau, Panku, Dylan Roberts, Venomous Centipede. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Jesús,
Antonio: Curiosidades
- Pinfloy, un vocablo del sur, Solo En Las Nubes, 16.09.2011. Mason,
Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books,
London, 2011 reissue, p. 169. Muños, Abelard: Rafa
Gassent, director de cinema, La Veu, 07.01.2014. Palacios,
Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London,
2010, p. 320. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red
Books, London, 2001, p. 119.
Our Tumblr page contains a description of another movie with Pink Floyd
music, that we deliberately didn't include here: Alex De Renzy‘s Little
Sisters (1972).
I'll start this Roger
Waters solo history in 1983 and pretend The
Body soundtrack (1970) never happened (it's definitively worth
checking out and not only for the Waters compositions, if you don't mind
the seventies tomfoolery).
The
Final Cut (1983) was issued as a Pink
Floyd album but is considered a virtual Roger Waters solo work with
some guitar solos by David
Gilmour and occasional percussion by that playboy drummer.
Originally intended as a Wall spin-off it grew into a political
manifesto against the Falklands crisis. And if that wasn't already
mind-boggling enough Waters also recycled some early-Wall melodies that
never made it on the double album because they weren't considered good
enough by Bob Ezrin and co.
The Final Cut set the standard for his future solo projects that
invariably contain a few good to excellent tracks, but unfortunately
also a lot of monotonous rubble. Most of them are also packaged in
puke-ugly covers.
The
Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking (1984) is the third part in the Wall
series, it even borrows some musical themes from that one. But just like
in the original Planet
Of The Apes franchise quality gradually degrades from sequel to
sequel, from solo project to solo project.
Blowing in the Wind
Waters' contribution to the When
The Wind Blows soundtrack (1986) takes a complete vinyl side. It
contains roughly 12 minutes of experimental synth drones, sound effects
and movie samples, sandwiched between one excellent and one just OK
song. Towers
of Faith has Waters at his best with vitriolic and sarcastic nags at
the Pope and his former bandmates: "this band is MY band…" It’s a pity
the track was put on a rather obscure soundtrack of a rather obscure
movie, not the last time this would happen with his songs. (For the
completists who will otherwise correct me: it can also be found on the Flickering
Flame compilation.)
Radio
KAOS (1987) is an even weirder one. It is built around a radio show
and features poppy songs with a typical eighties rock radio sound.
Although it sounds dated nowadays it is not half as bad as everyone
pretends. One of the good things is that it is a single album. Roger
Waters wanted to make it a double but this was vetoed against by the
powers that be. Some of these rejected demos were put on B-sides,
remember singles?, and I can only agree with those record executives.
The only thing that suffered from the weeding is the concept, Radio KAOS
is as odd and incomprehensible as one of those eerie second series Twin
Peaks episodes.
When you can’t sell new records, sell old ones, Waters must have thought
and The
Wall Live in Berlin (1990) was born. It’s The Wall all over again,
this time with guests, Bier und Bratwurst.
Not Amused at all
All this was just a general repetition for what Waters considers his
magnum opus. When a colleague at work told me, 25 years ago, that the
latest Waters record had a lot of explosions, I was not impressed at
all. A record is not judged by the amount of sound effects, especially
not when they interfere with the music. Amused
To Death sounds as if a piano player is playing in the far corner of
a crowded restaurant and all you hear is the rhubarby mumbling of the
people, the clashing of cutlery, falling plates, waiters taking
orders... Many will disagree but Amused to Death (1992) is Waters
equivalent of Battle
for the Planet of the Apes, it even has got a monkey on its
fart-smelly cover. That record has all the tricks Waters is famous for:
over the top shouting, tracks that are repeated over several parts,
lists instead of lyrics and the drowning of the melody under a layer of
sound effects… If Waters sings about a nuclear attack, you can bet your
ass there will be missiles wooshing through your surround system for the
next three minutes.
People might think I hate Waters, but this is not really the case. He
genuinely surprised me with his In
The Flesh tour and the highlights of The Final Cut, Pros And Cons
and Amused to Death he brought there proves that Waters has some good
songs in him.
This introduction has been going on too long, it fucking starts to sound
like one of his albums, so we’ll skip his opera
(everyone did) and the few excellent (Hello,
I love you) and bad singles (Leaving
Beirut) he made over the years.
Did I tell you that Waters is a man of continuous repetition…
When you can’t sell new records, sell old ones, so Waters had another go
at The
Wall, basically a lip-synch show with a video screen the size of a
football field. For me this was the lowest point in his career despite
the fact that he sold over four million tickets to the masses. (Read
more at: Skeletons
from the Kloset.)
But now, after some 25 years, there is a new Roger Waters record, and
it's excellent.
Is This The Life We Really Want?
When We Were Young: a garbled introduction, taken from a Waters
interview or monologue that gradually becomes clearer to understand.
Personally it makes me think remotely of the Wish You Were Here radio
introduction. Pink Floyd has of course a tradition of ambient opening
tracks. Their last album had Things
Left Unsaid that started with (equally garbled) Rick Wright and
David Gilmour quotes, but borrowing is allowed among friends.
The intro segues into Déjà Vu that has been known since
25 September 2014 under the title Lay
Down Jerusalem (If I Had Been God) when he performed it at the
Russell Tribunal at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, in
support of the Palestinian people.
Luckily it is a far better opening song than What
God Wants was (on his previous rock album), although it is pretty
snotty to compare yourself with a deity. Waters would have been a pretty
solid Roman emperor, he seems to think of himself. Rogergula.
The song itself is wonderful and reminds me of the best of The Final Cut
with its piano and violin arrangement and some scarce sound effects that
for once don't ruin the song. Probably producer Nigel
Godrich is to thank for that. An anonymous source gave us the
following snippet of a dialogue between the artist and his producer.
Roger Waters: "How many explosions can I have?" Nigel
Godrich: "One." RW: "One per song, cool." NG:
"No, one in total." RW: "Only one? Can I have some fucks
then?" NG: "You can have as many fucks as you like."
(Despite the critique at several reviews and fora that there are too
many swearwords on the album, I could only count seven fucks.)
The Last Refugee starts as an uncomplicated love song and has
incredible beautiful and yet simple lines:
Show me the shy slow smile you keep hidden by warm brown eyes.
Waters proves that he is an excellent lyricist and singer, alternating
softly sung parts with pieces where he vainly tries to suppress his
anger. The atmosphere of the song and the way Waters sings it makes me
think of Johnny
Cash's Solitary
Man, that was an opus of withheld emotionalism (not only on this
song, by the way). Up till now we haven't heard a single guitar solo yet
and that can only be regarded as a good point. It seems that Waters has
finally got rid of Gilmour's shadow, whom he tried to replace in vain
with Eric
Clapton or Jeff
Beck. This is a hidden gem that grows on you with every session and
if you don't get a tear in your eyes, nothing will.
Picture That has a Welcome
To The Machine rhythm just before Waters starts with a set of
'shopping list' lyrics, a trick he has used in his entire career and
that he will repeat here as well on several songs. Do not expect that
Roger pictures himself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and
marmalade skies, quite the contrary, in his imagination kids run around
with their hands on the trigger of a gun carefully avoiding wooden
legged Afghans. There are quite some Floydian references for the
perceptive fan, musically to Sheep
(and Welcome To The Machine) and lyrically to Wish
You Were Here that is sardonically linked to Guantánamo
Bay. Roger's voice sounds coarse and rough throughout the track but
the synthesizer sounds thin and the guitar doesn't snap to the beat. Not
a bad tune, but it has something lacking to make it really great. It may
be contradictory to what I wrote before but this track would have
benefited from the over-the-top grandeur that only a full Pink Floyd
treatment can give. Let's have some of Rick's Turkish
Delight, please. Unless it was Roger's or Nigel's wish to make it
sound as Thin Floyd. Still a fucking great skeleton of a song though,
with obvious nods to his musical past.
Broken Bones starts like one of those more intimate Final Cut
tracks (Southampton
Dock, Paranoid
Eyes) and has the default Waters screams whenever the refrain hits.
Great little folkie tune, with a certain Bob
Dylan feel, nothing more, nothing less, with a foul-mouthed Waters
who isn't afraid to express his opinion:
We cannot turn back the clock Cannot go back in time But we can
say: Fuck you, we will not listen to Your bullshit and lies
Is This The Life We Really Want? Surely the message is of more
importance than the melody here, Waters acts almost as a beat poet. It
has Waters reciting a shopping list again, like the following strophe:
toothless hags, supermodels, actors, fags, bleeding hearts, football
stars, men in bars, washer women, tailors, tarts, grannies,
grandpas, uncles, aunts, friends, relations, homeless tramps, clerics, truckers, cleaning
ladies, ants...
But believe it or not, it really works in the context of the song. Great
poetic track, with a sudden splash of surreal humour.
Bird In A Gale. When this track lifts off after the default TV
and radio samples, it turns into a Floydian Sheep-pastiche with Waters'
shouting his lines. There is a dog in the lyrics, hopefully not one of
those Gilmourian dogs
of war, and is that a cash register at the end or just some weird
machinery clicking away the moments that make up a dull day? Up till now
the flow of the record has just been perfect, although this track is, in
my opinion, of lesser quality. It simply tries to hard to mimic Floyd,
including the repeating echoes at each line, line, line, line, line...
The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, the six minutes track takes
longer as its subject as she is already finished off in the third line
of the song 'like a pearl crushed by a bulldozer'. A typical album
track, not really one we'll remember as being the highlight of this
album, but not bad either. A bit like Gilmour did on Rattle
That Lock with the throwaway song The
Girl In The Yellow Dress, but at least she managed to survive till
the end.
This one needs some extra attention to really get into and should
probably be listened to on its own. The lyrics are also quite hermetic
and if someone can explains me what it is really about, then thanks. The
last strophe is particularly moving with the I'm coming home, bit.
Perhaps if I give it some time, it could grow into a favourite. (But who
has time, nowadays, for that?)
Smell The Roses is the least original song of the album. It takes
its melody from Have
A Cigar, has a mad dog on a chain barking, an obscured
by clouds guitar at the interlude and a Floydian girlie choir. But
just because it sounds so familiar and is full of clichés it rapidly
grows into an earworm.
Wait For Her / Oceans Apart / Part Of Me Died. The
last song is a three-parter that has been given separate titles.
The first part undoubtedly is a poetic song about love (and for
perverted minds: lovemaking), but in the last strophe there suddenly is
a 'last fusillade' whatever that means. The lyrics are inspired by a
poem (with the same title) from Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish and some lines have been taken literally from the original (Wait
For Her by Mahmoud Darwish).
Oceans Apart is a short, one strophe, musical bridge between part one
and three, making it clear that the woman he sings about is the love of
his life.
Part Of Me Died has Waters listing again, this time it's a collection of
his bad characteristics (or so it seems) that the woman he loves has
made disappear. It is a very introspective Waters who ends the record
with:
Bring me my final cigarette It would be better by far to die in her
arms Than to linger In a lifetime of regret
Roger Waters writing a dark love-song, who would ever guess that? It's
simple, it's dumb, but Roger Waters has finally proven again he still is
the pilot of the Pink Floyd airship.
I never thought I would come to this conclusion, but Is This The Life We
Really Want? is a fucking good Roger Waters record, the best since The
Final Cut if you ask me. Luckily it has a spit-ugly cover and almost
undecipherable lettering so I can still end this review on a grumpy note.
If the rumours arriving at Atagong Mansion are true - and why shouldn't
they? - the relationship between Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Waters is again at
a very low level, so low that they can't be bothered visiting the Their
Mortal Remains exhibition together, or just making a mutual
statement about it.
The Early Years
The last time they really had to cooperate, or that their lawyers and
agents had to work together, was with the making of The Early Years
box-set (and its satellite releases). For the average fan this seems a
nice compilation, with many previously unreleased gems, although the
average fan will not be immediately tempted, just try to listen to John
Latham (parts 1 to 9) in its entirety or get through ten (10!)
different versions of Atom
Heart Mother. Unfortunately the editors lost interest in the project
and the closer you get to the final tome, the less rare material there
is to find. In the end they had to throw in a few movies that every
collector already has and yet another remaster of Obscured
By Clouds to get something, uh..., mildly significant.
The Early Years compilation is meant for those über-fans, those
completists, who eat, breathe and defecate Pink Floyd on a daily basis.
And these hard-to-please crusty old dinosaurs were hugely disappointed
with the amateurish treatment. An unique mono soundtrack – never
(officially) released - was replaced with the common stereo one, by a
project manager who was on the job for two decades but who didn't give a
fuck to glue the right sound to the right video. Things went wrong with
the analogue to digital conversion and video soundtracks play at the
wrong speed. The 'exclusive' (remixed and remastered) BBC live
recordings are in a worse condition than the free footwear you can find
on Yeeshkul... Basically, for Floydian super-geeks, it is a mess. (Read
our review at: Supererog/Ation:
skimming The Early Years).
Their Mortal Remains
About the same can be said about the London-based Their Mortal Remains
exhibition. Now this is clearly a mass-event made to please the big
public. Visiting a rock-band exhibition is a bit like fucking for peace,
it's pleasant, no doubt about that, but in the end: what's the point,
other than saying: 'look at all these guitars'.
Critical fans describe the exhibition as 'lots of show, with little
substance' with posters and video clips and accessories that everyone
has seen before. One room has been created especially for Sennheiser
so they can promote their 379£ - 500$ - 425€ Pink Floyd headset. The
main goal of the exhibition is to get as many people as possible into
the shop that sells a lot of expensive goodies. Let's go to (a
vitriolic) Peter
At The Gates Of Dawn (A Fleeting Glimpse forum) for a precise
description:
It gets worse and worse. What's wrong with the old gits? This V&A thing
has been appallingly organised with dodgy overpriced die cast vans you
can't buy, plush pigs with 'Pink Floyd Animals' printed on their arse in
case you're not a Floyd fan and thought it might be just a plush pig and
the Atom Heart Mother fridge magnet with Atom Heart Mother written on it
so the current 'management' knows where it belongs and don't
accidentally includes it as a Kate Bush item. (…) Now a book
die hards have been waiting 40+ years for, released in a manner which
can only be an insult to its author. Definitely an insult to the fans
but hopefully to Dave Gilmour too. Sneaked out exclusively so none of us
can read it.
In The Pink
That last paragraph is about a curiosity that suddenly showed up in the
V&A shop: Nick Sedgwick's long-promised 'In The Pink
(Not A Hunting Memoir)'. It was already rumoured in April 2016 that the
exhibition would eventually sell copies of that book, but it only showed
up there (and at the webshop) on the 20th of July 2017, some say in a
very limited quantity of 20 copies.
The story of that book is a pretty odd one, not an exception if you
realise we are currently roaming in Floyd-land.
Nick Sedgwick was a close friend of Roger Waters in their Cambridge days
and as such it was no surprise that he became part of the Cambridge
mafia, circling in and around the band. In 1974 Waters ask his golf
buddy to follow the band on tour and write a journal about it. That
diary turned into a personal testimony of life on the road and its
intrinsic problems. It (apparently) shows Roger Waters playing the alpha
male of the band, bossing the others around and trying to cope with a
failing marriage.
When the book was finished none of the other members were keen on it and
it was shelved. Nick Sedgwick died in 2011 and Waters promised to
finally release it, but for the next 6 years nothing happened with the
manuscript (see: Immersion).
It was believed that David Gilmour was behind the boycott because Nick
Mason, after all these decades, couldn't be bothered any more.
Eventually Roger Waters promised in 2016 and once again this year that
the project was still on, but we all know how long it can take before he
fulfils his promises.
But this week it was confirmed by fans that they had purchased the book
at Their Mortal Remains. What is weird is that the book doesn't have an ISBN
number, which is needed to sell it on webshops like Amazon and in
regular bookshops. It does have the following mention though:
Design and layout copyright (c) Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd 2017 Published
by Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd 2017
Meanwhile it seems that the book can also be bought at Roger Waters'
concerts in the USA and V&A has allegedly received a new batch as well.
Many things can still be said about this important work, that was once
described by Pink Floyd biographer Mark
Blake as 'dynamite', but as long as the Church doesn't have a copy
we'll leave it like that. The problem is that it appears to be pretty
limited and that the only place to get it is at a Waters gig or at the
London exhibition (hint!).
Give us a sign if you have one too many! (another hint!)
Update: a copy of this book landed on our desk in 2018, our
review can be found here: Roger
is always right.)
Many thanks to: An@log, Azerty, Chris from Paris, Mob, Peter at the
Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd 1977, TW113079. Pictures: Peter at the Gates
of Dawn. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Last year in June a French 'Pathe Marconi' edition of Syd
Barrett's Octopus
single was sold
for 10,500 Euro, a small fortune, if you ask us, unless you happen
to be an administrator of a Facebook Syd Barrett group. The single came
from the ORTF archives, Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française,
and as such it was 'tattooed', labelled and written on.
Arte
So why were collectors so eager to have this (less than mint) vinyl
record in their collection? The French-German television station Arte
tried to find an answer and made a 25 minutes documentary about it all,
existing in two languages.
When you read this the chance is big you can’t watch the show any more
as it was only online for a week, in January 2017. On top of that there
was a geo-block,
except for Belgium. Probably France and Germany are still still thinking
we are one of their underdeveloped colonies.
The reason why this vinyl is so expensive is due to the fact that this
particular edition has only survived in about ten copies (and one of
those was recently lost in a fire). As such it is a Ferrari for vinyl
collectors, as someone states in the documentary. They were only given
away as promotional material and the superfluous copies were melted to
recuperate the vinyl. Isn't recycling a good thing?
The ORTF library got four, numbers two and three went missing over the
years, euphemistically described by the program makers as damaged, and
the first one was auctioned to the public.
Those who are old enough to have seen The
Wall movie in the cinemas may remember the intrepid interview that
two Actuel reporters had with Syd Barrett in Cambridge. (Read it here: French
Magazine Article - ACTUEL) Although the conversation with the madcap
took only about six lines, and was mainly about a bag of laundry, it
created quite a buzz. French like that. That same Actuel magazine also
had an article about an adventurer archaeologist who knew where the
mythical El Dorado could be found. Needless to say he couldn't but
Actuel wrote a ten pages long article about it, just in case.
Duggie
Arte does pretty much the same when they repeat the rumour that the
Pathe Marconi sleeve could have been drawn by monsieur Barrett
himself. They immediately embark to London to interview Duggie
Fields. Fields doesn't immediately recognise Syd's style, but he
isn't 100% sure either as there are certain Syd-esque style elements in
the drawing. But several other details imply that the sleeve hasn't been
made by Syd.
First of all: it depicts a sea animal, while the Octopus in the song is
a fairground ride. Second: the sleeve has the name of the graphical
artist printed at the right bottom side. Dessin: lilli, it reads, which
means drawing by Lilli.
So those Frenchies could've avoided going to London anyway, but I guess
they had to fill up those 25 minutes. And it is always a pleasure seeing
Duggie, one of the few British gentlemen left. (Read our Duggie Fields
self-interview here: Duggie
Fields, much more than a room-mate)
Peter
Peter Jenner has been interviewed as well. He doesn’t really tell us
anything new, but this documentary wasn’t made for Floydian anoraks. He
talks about the fast rocket that Pink Floyd was, unfortunately a rocket
that exploded in mid-flight.
I see him as a shooting star, he lifts off in 1966, he writes his songs,
has an enormous success, and then he disappears.
A third interviewee is Bill Palmieri, an American record collector who
is an esteemed member of several Floydian groups, and who also happens
to have an original French Octopus in his collection, after searching
for it for over thirty years. He thinks there are less than 5 copies of
this 'holy grail' in the hands of collectors. He talks with much love
about his records, about Pink Floyd, about Syd Barrett. It is intriguing
but quite a bit weird as well. It's pretty cool to see that he consults
the Charles
Beterams' Pink
Floyd On Forty-Five book were the single is listed on page 69.
Plenty of weirdos in Floydian circles, guilty as charged.
Update 19 January 2017: Charles Beterams, author of 'Pink Floyd
in Nederland' and owner of a Floydian collectors shop, estimates there
are still more copies around:
The “less than five” guess is far below what is realistic. I’ve sold two
different copies over the years and know of at least four other copies
in existence. a few dozen at least are left and around.
Jean-Michel
To further elaborate on the madcap’s enigma a French scholar is asked as
well. Jean-Michel
Espitallier, author of the quirky essay Le
Rock Et Autres Trucs and translator of Tim Willis' Madcap in the
language of Molière. He praises the lyrics of Octopus, in his opinion a
predecessor of the lyrics that made progressive bands like Yes and
Genesis so popular.
Syd Barrett is a person who traumatised rock . He was so powerful, so
original, so fast, as a kind of Arthur
Rimbaud.”
The value of this record has skyrocketed over the years. Record
Collector 327 (September 2006) valued it at £650 and in the late
nineties collector David Parker got offered one for £500, a deal he
unfortunately refused and now regrets:
A dealer got in touch with me a few months ago, he was accepting bids
for an ok -but-not-exceptional copy... current highest bid was €6500
(+/- £5740, FA).
An Italian collector signalled us that at the record fair in Utrecht the
price was €16,000 for one and €20,000 for another one in a better
condition. Lots of dough for an Octopus ride, but the copy from the ORTF
archives seems to have beaten the record, for now...
A gallery with screenshots of this documentary on our Tumblr blog: Octopus.
The Church wishes to thank: Charles Beterams, Mary Cosco, Rich Hall,
David Parker ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥ Paula ♥
I'm a bit late with my review of Ginger Gilmour's Memoirs
of the Bright Side of the Moon (2015), but I do have my reasons, or
– at least - so I think. The big Pink Floyd websites ignored the book as
they are only allowed to bark when Paul
Loasby, who is David
Gilmour's leprechaun, allows them to and on top of that The Holy
Church does need to maintain its contrarious reputation.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the
Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit and do not necessarily reflect the policy
of Pink Floyd, nor its members, nor any of their (ex-)wives.
1
The luxurious hardcover book is thick and heavy, printed on glossy
paper, with over a hundred pictures and taking it with me on my daily
commute would only gradually destroy it as it would mingle with my
Nutella sandwiches and my weird obsession for Belgian pickles.
2
So I placed it in my special books section at home and promptly forgot
about it for a couple of years. I am more or less a dozen of Pink Floyd
related books behind and that list only gets bigger and bigger. One of
the oldest books I have never read is Barry
Miles' Pink Floyd: The Early Years (2006 already!) and I am
still collecting courage to dig into the 2017 deluxe version of his In
The Sixties autobiography that I received last year. I never made it
past 1970 in Glenn
Povey's Echoes (2007), that I mainly use as a reference work
(and I never bought its 2015 enhanced and updated successor The
Complete Pink Floyd: The Ultimate Reference). I have purchased Charles
Beterams' Pink Floyd in Nederland (2017), but I hardly opened
its predecessor Pink Floyd in de Polder (2007). Same thing for
the Their Mortal Remains (2017) catalogue, although from the few
pages I did read it appears to be a semi-pretentious bag of dubious
quality and quite error prone. Nick Sedgwick's In The Pink
(2017), scrupulously sought for but never consulted, and don’t get me
started on my Hipgnosis
/ Storm
Thorgerson coffee table books collection, but these all seem to
overlap anyway.
Free
But back to Ginger Gilmour's memoirs. Besides the fact that it is thick
and heavy, its cover is in bright pink and I didn’t want people to think
I was reading a Barbie Dream Castle novel on the train. A pink
cover and a pretty positive title, surely this must be a book with a
message.
First of all, these are Ginger's memoirs and although there is a lot of
David Gilmour inside, especially around the tumultuous The
Wall / A
Momentary Lapse Of Reason years, Pink Floyd isn't its primordial
subject, certainly not in the later chapters when – SPOILER ALERT –
their marriage has failed. Over the years Ginger has grown spiritually
and artistically and this book minutiously reveals the path she walked /
crawled / stumbled to get over there.
The main trouble is, for grumpy diabetics in a mid-life crisis such as
me, that sucrose is dripping from nearly every page and that Ginger uses
the word Beauty (with capital B) in about every other paragraph. Angels
magically appear in Space Invaders droves. There is a lot of talk about
Inspiration. And Meditation. Wonder. Goodness. Hope. Peace. LOVE. It's
almost cuteness overload.
Four
Ginger has found inner peace by soaking in a bath of alternative,
new-age, eastern-style religious and philosophical mindsets and isn't
afraid of saying so. It's just not my cup of tea and it must have been
hard on the frail internal Floydian communication lines as well, as has
been hinted by Mark
Blake. When Animals
appeared there wasn't only a cold war between the Pink Floyd members
going on, but also between their wives...
Ginger also found herself clashing with Waters’ new girlfriend, Carolyne
Christie. Both came from wildly different backgrounds and, as one
associate from the time recalls, ‘they did not see eye to eye'.
Ginger would throw a tantrum, rightly so if you ask me, over promoters
who found it funny to add pigpens – with real pigs - at Pink Floyd
backstage parties. She wouldn't rest until the animals had been set
free. In one hilarious case the freed pig destroyed a hotel room by
shitting all over the place.
I can imagine the sneers from vitriolic Roger Waters towards
David Gilmour, on tour and in the studio, about 'hippie chick' Ginger.
The fact that David used to sneak out of the studio for steak sandwiches
and hamburgers, something his vegan wife didn't really appreciate, must
have made Gilmour an easy target for Roger Waters.
The book has 90 chapters, counts over 630 pages and Floydian content can
be found in about the first two thirds. These titbits relish a Floydian
anorak as they give an inside look on life on the road and in the
studio. Like silly crew contests, for instance:
Chris Adamson won because he ate the most amount of raw potatoes and
Little Mick won for eating the most amount of fried eggs. P43
Pork Chops
Most of the time Ginger recounts about her own life, with its big and
little adventures and anecdotes, like getting married without the rest
of the band knowing it and meeting a memory from the past in the studio
later that day (something David Gilmour always denied it happened). But
that story of what happened on the 7th of July 1975 has already been
told here before: Shady
Diamond.
Sound of Silence
David Gilmour never was an extrovert person and if there were problems
in the band, he tried to hide those for his wife.
I was not always aware of the tensions growing in the band. Moreover,
just how much of that tension subtly influenced our relationship. David
held most of these matters to himself. P99
But of course not everything could be kept a secret. Ginger did see the
signs that something was wrong when Roger Waters isolated himself from
the rest of the band during the shoddy Animals tour, where at one point
Rick Wright flew back home because he couldn't stand the bass player any
more.
This could have been the end of Pink Floyd but unfortunately the Norton
Warburg financial debacle meant that they had to produce a smash album
to recoup their financial losses. Despite the animosity in the band the
three others agreed to give Waters free reign. On holiday in Lindos,
Gilmour listened for days to The Wall tapes. His reaction was not
immediately positive:
I don't think I can really work with this. I have no idea how this could
become something people would enjoy listening to. It is just Angst! P200
One of my Turns
As we all know The Wall did turn into a massive success, but creating it
was a burden for all those involved. Roger turned into something of a
dictator and started to harass the others. Ginger Gilmour witnessed a
few of these exchanges.
What also made it difficult was the fact that he [Rick Wright, FA] was
often the punching bag. The camaraderie of the band's relationship was
always boy tease boy, but for me this was getting to be too cruel. Rick
buckled. It was heartbreaking to watch. P217
Ginger stays vague about David Gilmour's apparent compliance with Roger
Waters. The guitarist might even have suggested to Roger to throw Nick
Mason out of the band and to continue as a duo. This was told by Roger
Waters in one of his angry post-Pink-Floyd interviews and denied by
Gilmour.
Anyway, creating The Wall was a continuous fight between the two main
protagonists, with Mason diplomatically acting as the 'ship's cook':
I see various commanders come and go, and, when things get really bad, I
just go back down to the galley.
Comfortably Numb
Ginger Gilmour describes the atmosphere during the sessions as follows:
I watched David's quiet and sometimes not so quit influences bringing
music to us that spoke of hope, outside the lyrics. I saw his struggle.
He tried so hard. I watched Rick's withdrawal give a podium for a victim
within the subconscious aspects of the story. I watched Nick's struggle
between friendship and finding his voice. P222
It can't be denied though that Nick and David pretty much agreed with
Roger, until Waters sneered once too much...
David was in a mood when I arrived [at a Japanese restaurant, FA]. I
will never forget the look of shock on everyone's face especially
Roger's, with everyone's tensions riding high. Roger wanted to remove
'Comfortably Numb' from the album. It was one of the only songs, which
David had a major credit for and he exploded. I think if he had known
karate the table would have split in two! I will never forget the look
of shock on everyone's face, especially Roger's. P232
The Wall, with Comfortably Numb included, was successful, but the
problems were far from over. In 1981 a barn filled with Floyd fireworks
went up in a fire, killing the farmer and several firemen in the
explosion. Pink Floyd's army of lawyers reacted that it wasn't their
problem and the band was later acquitted from all (financial)
responsibility.
The Thin Ice
The tension in the band had its negative influence on Gilmour's marriage
as well . The first cracks in the 'thin ice' started to show. David
confided to Emo that he feared that the Sant
Mat movement had too much influence on his wife, what Emo – himself
a Charan
Singh follower - duly contradicted.
A great deal of the book is about the many fantastic people Ginger has
met over the years, ranging from the cook at a Greek restaurant to the
great spiritual leaders of this world (all the people she mentions must
run in the hundreds). David always liked to have his old Cambridge
friends around, Emo and Pip and the people he played with in his
pre-Floyd bands. When he hears the terrible news about Ponji he is
genuinely shocked and saddened. (Read about Pip and Ponji here: We
are all made of stars.)
Gilmour's behaviour changed radically when he became the new great
leader of Pink Floyd, some of his old friends (and family members)
claim. Polly
Samson may have had a certain influence in this as well. Nowadays
David hardly has contact with the old mob and it is believed the
Roger-David feud is again as big as it was three decades ago. However,
the Pink Floyd wars are now fought in private, between lawyers and
managers, and only surface when new product sees the light of day. (See
also: Supererog/Ation:
skimming The Early Years.)
Run Like Hell
After The
Final Cut there was the battle for the band, a conflict that was
more of importance for David than saving his own marriage.
I remember the moment David further closed his heart, and rage took its
place. P381
To finance the new project Nick Mason mortgaged his 1962 GTO Ferrari.
David Gilmour put his houses at stake, without consulting his wife first.
We, our family security, were on the tightrope as well. (…) No wonder
David grew more withdrawn from me. Our eyes stopped meeting. I kept
looking. He was holding more than tension. He was holding a secret. P382
In order to make the new Floyd viable the family had to go on tax exile
again. David didn't have the guts to tell his wife, so he ordered Steve
O'Rourke to pass the message during an informal dinner. It made
Ginger wonder if her husband would also instruct his manager to tell her
if he wanted a divorce.
Visions of an Empty Bed
David Gilmour, who was already afraid that new age and eastern
philosophies had too much influence on his wife, unwillingly pushed her
further away as she sought guidance in the mental colour therapy of The
Maitreya School of Healing and in the teachings of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya
order. Ginger Gilmour (in Mark Blake's biography):
I was getting more alternative - starting to meditate - and he was doing
more cocaine and hanging out with all kinds of people.
Diet Floyd minus Waters was on a two years world tour, but dieting is
not what happened backstage. Every night an alcohol and dope infested
inferno was launched with emperor David Gilmour approvingly joining in
the caligulesque festivities. On the few free days he was back in
Britain, he didn't bother to show up at home, not even to greet the
children.
Young Lust
Ginger Gilmour is very discrete about David's party life, but she
doesn't withhold the one conversation she overheard backstage at a
London show:
“Wow, I wouldn't mind getting into Gilmour's pants!” The
other woman, whose voice I recognised, said, “No problem. I will
introduce you. Get it on!” P503
This was the story of The Wall all over again, now with David 'Fred'
Gilmour and Ginger as the couple in trouble.
We, David and I, were living in separate houses, separate lives joined
only by our children and a piece of paper affirming, “until death do us
part'. P481-482
House of Broken Dreams
In summer 1998 they went to Hawaii for a last time together, trying to
act like a family but sleeping in different beds. A bitter Gilmour had
the habit of answering the phone with the sentence 'House Of Broken
Dreams'. This line was picked up by Graham
Nash who wrote a song about Ginger and David's family situation.
House Of Broken Dreams would appear on the Crosby,
Stills & Nash album Live
It Up (1990):
Separate houses separate hearts It's hard to face the feelings
tearing us apart And in this house of broken dreams love lies (Listen
to it on YouTube: House
Of Broken Dreams.)
By then Ginger Gilmour sought and found her own way of survival by
painting and sculpting. In December 1989 she co-organised a charity
Christmas Carol Fantasy. She notes, in her typical spiritual mood that
seeps through the text and that gets more frequent near the end:
I felt I was being guided by something greater than me, the Divine power
of our Creator and his team of Angels. Miracles happened each day.
I'm not sure if angels were involved or not, but David Gilmour, who was
by then living on his own on Malda Avenue, agreed to help her out for
the rock'n roll section of the show. He assembled the Christmas Carol
Fantasy Band that comprised of Paul Young, Vicki Brown, Jon Lord,
Mick Ralphs, Rick Wills, Nick Laird-Clowes, performing Imagine and Happy
Christmas (War Is Over).
Outside the Wall
The divorce did not embitter Ginger and she writes with much love about
David Gilmour and Pink Floyd. She seems to be such a nice lady and her
book is so filled with uplifting optimism that it almost is a sin to
criticise her, but it is not without flaws.
Ginger Gilmour sees divine intervention about everywhere so that I can
only deduct that over the years she created her own personal cuckoo
land. This is mostly harmless, but after a time it gets slightly
irritating. An example. Ginger invites Buddhist Lama Kalu
Rinpoche to one of The Wall shows in Los Angeles. When he leaves the
concert, just before the final, something apparently magical happens
when he walks through the crowd.
I will never forget the expressions that lit up their faces in contrast
to what they were witnessing. It was as though they saw Christ. Their
hearts opened with the thought that he had graced them by being there.
P244
Not only did the concertgoers have the show of their life, they were
also blessed by the apparition of a godlike creature, according to
Ginger. Harmless as this may be, it may not always be the case.
Suggesting that mental colour therapy could help with diseases such as
AIDS sounds pretty much like potentially dangerous quackery to me.
But for the look behind the curtains of this band, during one of its
darkest seasons, this bleeding anorak is thankful.
All pictures previously published by Iain 'Emo' Moore (and grabbed from
his Facebook timeline). Fred was David Gilmour's nickname in Cambridge. ♥
Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 252, 268, 336.
Roger
Waters is so rich that if he wants some orange juice for breakfast
he buys a plantation first. So it probably doesn't bother him that his
concert memorabilia cost you an arm and a leg, if you want to have them
shipped into Europe.
In July 2017 some vigilant Pink Floyd fans remarked that Nick Sedgwick's
'top secret' book In The Pink could suddenly be found at the London
Their Mortal Remains exhibition. The forbidden book appeared out of the
blue, without an official announcement, and it was rumoured that there
were only a handful of copies around, some even claimed less than
twenty. (Read about it at: In
The Pink hunt is open!)
Luckily this wasn't true and copies could (and still can) be purchased
from Roger Waters' webshop. Unfortunately this is an America only
webshop, meaning that for a 30$ book you have to add a 26$ transport fee
to have it shipped to the ancient world. That is not all. Once the book
arrives in the European Union our friends from DHL need to pass it
through customs clearance. There is a silly amount of import duties to
be paid, something in the range of 1,50$, but the additional
administration fee is the tenfold of that. In the end the book nearly
triples in price before you can hold it in your hands. It wouldn't
surprise me if Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd has some shares in the
transport mogul with the yellow red logo.
When Roger Waters wants to go hunting in Great Britain with his pals Eric
Clapton and Steve
Winwood, he hires a private jet for the day. Fine for me, but
opening a European webshop to financially help his hundreds of thousands
of fans is apparently way out of his league. It is a bit ambiguous for
someone who claims he writes his music for the people who are living at
the wrong side of capitalism. Probably he only means Palestinians.
Palestinians are good. Palestinians matter. I wonder if DHL charges less
if Palestinians order something from Waters' webshop.
OK. Fuck all that. This rant is over. It's time to stop and smell the
roses. Let's finally start with one of those spectacular Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit reviews.
Writing about music is not easy, how do you describe a rock ‘n’ roll
lick to someone who isn’t familiar with the piece? Author Alain
Pire had a ‘for private use only’ playlist of the tracks he
dissected in his doctoral work 'Anthropologie
du Rock Psychédelique Anglais' (2011), that I could listen to
while I savoured his prose. Without this auditory companion his book
would’ve been less fun and just a quasi-nonsensical catalogue of 109
psychedelic tracks. (Read our review here: AnthropoLSD)
Perhaps that is why I put Rob
Chapman’s 'Psychedelia
and other colours' lexicon (2015) aside after the first one hundred
pages or so. It felt like a cookbook to me, lots of recipes, but nothing
to eat. I should have the guts starting it all over again, this time
with YouTube at my side.
Actually, I’m not in the business any more of absorbing everything Floyd
related that is thrown at the fans. I bought Gilmour’s Pompeii
but there isn’t a single hair on my head thinking of ever putting it in
my Blu-Ray player (actually I don’t have a clue how to operate that
thing). My Russian friend Stanislav told me it is musically perfect, but
also soulless, and I value him enough to take his advice for granted.
Why another book about Pink Floyd, I hear you say and Kopp starts his
biography with the same question. According to the author the period
between the Floyd's debut to Dark
Side Of The Moon is a shadowy mess for the average fan, with a
wealth of gems that are often overlooked. I can only agree. Why this
average fan, who only knows Dark Side and The
Wall anyway, would suddenly be interested in the history of the
Floyd's earlier albums is still a mystery to me and Kopp can't answer
this either. Take me, for example, I have Hotel
California in my collection, but I don't feel temped to read a
biography about The 'early' Eagles.
But even I, crusty old dinosaur, can’t deny that with the publication of
The Early Years a lot of new material has seen the light of day, at
least officially, and that the previous
biography about the Floyd’s early days, the one from Barry
Miles, is already a decade overdue.
The Electric Prunes.
Dig That Hole
Every good biography claims to dig out something new and this is not
different for Reinventing Pink Floyd. At Yeeshkul
Bill Kopp unfolded his cunning plans, but I don't think that he
really found something earth-shattering. Interviewing Ron Geesin, Peter
Jenner, Jerry Shirley, John 'Willie' Wilson, Davy O'List and Steve Howe
is a great thing. Putting on your achievement list that you also
interviewed members of tribute bands and 'Syd superfan' Robyn Hitchcock
much less so. That's undervaluing your work before even starting it.
In the Why (Another Book About) Pink Floyd chapter the author starts by
giving his personal history of the band with some nice descriptions of
The Wall / The
Final Cut era, but he cuts a few corners too many. The Wall was
performed live in four cities, not three, as he pretends, forgetting
Dortmund. David Gilmour did not co-write the highly redundant Not
Now John, he merely sings most of the slightly insulting and easy
forgettable lyrics. Nick Mason only skipped drums for one track on The
Final Cut (he can hardly be heard on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason
though). Being careless in his statements is a repeating pattern and
Yeeshkul member Hallucalation has listed 11
factual errors for the first pages alone (but that man is a walking
music encyclopedia).
It feels good to see the term ROIO
appear again although I fear only cassette tape traders will remember
what that was. Bill Kopp is an American author, so he is well aware of
the few Dark Side Of The Moon singles and uses the American version of A
Nice Pair that has a live version of Astronomy
Domine. (Here he cuts a corner again by claiming that Rick Wright
co-composed the track and that Harvest
was an American subsidiary of EMI.) His theory though, that Syd Barrett
may have lifted the intro from The
Electric Prunes song 'Are
You Lovin' Me More (But Enjoying It Less)', is a tempting one.
Julian Palacios already remarked the same thing in his 2010 biography
Dark Globe but I had forgotten about it.
Bricks In The Wall
Kopp's biography mainly consists of listing and analysing the songs of
each and every official album, one by one, from the Floyd's debut to
Dark Side. With The Early Years box-set as his companion he also
minutiously describes the early singles and demos, out-takes,
(alternative) live versions, movie tracks and others... The BBC radio
gigs, that can be found in a scandalously amateurish way in the Floyd
box, are also the subject of Kopp's very detailed dissection. Where The
Early Years set has some hiatuses he consults those bootlegs (sorry,
ROIO) that clearly show the evolution of several Floydian suites: Dark
Side Of The Moon, Echoes, Atom Heart Mother... you name it, he plays it.
Note: Over at Yeeshkul
Neonknight, and some of his accomplices, are working on the definitive
BBC radio compilation. So far quality greatly exceeds the one from the
'official' release, plus they seem to have unearthed some tapes Pink
Floyd Ltd. didn't know they even existed. It's still a work in progress,
though.
It is in those detailed descriptions where the cookie crumbles, dear sistren
and brethren of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. What to make
of the following exposé at page 72 that I randomly picked:
Rick Wright's organ becomes a more central melodic element, and while
the reading contains its fair share of improvisation, there's a greater
musicality to the instrumental work. Gilmour elicits all manner of
otherworldly squeals from his guitar, while Waters turns in a hypnotic
bass line that displays the progress he has made as a player. A new,
stomping two-chord interlude has been introduced into the song, set
against a section in which Gilmour plays more atonal figures on guitar;
the call-and-response between the two sections serves both to heighten
tension and root the more abstract parts in a more conventional musical
foundation (P72-73).
Without knowing what song and performance this is about, this is the
kind of gibberish art critics put on catalogues of their newest fad.
Paragraphs like the above come thirteen in a dozen. (The song is Interstellar
Overdrive, by the way, played at the Beeb in December 1968.)
In my long career as a Floyd lover I have listened to a lot of Pink
Floyd early tours live tracks, and I remember some of those pretty well,
but some of Kopp's descriptions fly way above my head. As such the book
should only be consulted with the right track playing through your
digital audio player. I'm sorry, but I simply don't have the time for
that.
Tomorrow.
One Of The Few
Now about the new spectacular things Bill Kopp found out. Actually it is
only one. Steve
Howe, from Tomorrow
and Yes
(and about a million of spin-off-bands), once was asked to step in for
Syd Barrett.
“One night we were playing somewhere else.” says Steve Howe. “I was
rushed to London to stand in for Syd. I was delighted; I love playing
with people I hadn't played with before.”
But once he arrived, he was met by Steve O'Rourke of Pink Floyd's
management team Blackhill Enterprises, who told him, “Well, thanks a
lot, but actually Syd's just about going to make it.” (P42.)
Did you catch the obvious error in the above, BTW? Like I previously
said, Bill Kopp likes to cut corners. (Solution.)
Update April 2017: According to Hallucalation, over at Yeeshkul,
the Steve Howe anecdote has been published before, on the liner notes of
his Mothballs
(1994) compilation.
Kopp is also pretty sure David Gilmour stepped in for Syd Barrett on at
least one December 1967 show, but fails to make this rumour hard. It has
been published before though, for instance in Glenn Povey's Echoes book
from 2007 where it is written that the evidence comes from Jimi
Hendrix's drummer Mitch
Mitchell (who claims that Gilmour may have been around for several
Pink Floyd shows). Apparently the public was most of the time so high
they never spotted the difference. If it is true, of course. Opinions
differ.
Things Left Unsaid
While Kopp gives very detailed reports of the Floyd's live tracks and
their studio counterparts, he is pretty fragmentary on all other
biographical subjects. The first American tour isn't mentioned at all
and Barrett's alleged drugs intake only gets a quick mention. While his
book wants to highlight the hidden musical gems from the band, there
isn't a word about the Hipgnosis
artwork that has been a part of the Floyd's mystery for decades. At the
other side there are some comparisons to American psychedelic groups,
i.c. Grateful
Dead.
Much of what Pink Floyd called 'John Latham' sounds like what the Dead
would call 'Space' or 'Drums' (P51).
His detailed dissection of Floyd tracks brings forward an interesting
theory about The
Committee. The soundtrack contains a mysterious anomaly on the first
piece of music, played backwards in the movie.
It features a most unusual mix of sounds: drums sound like Indian tabla,
guitars sound like sitars (or electric sitars), and the keyboard sounds
seem to be coming from an early modular synthesizer. It's worth noting
that none of these instruments had made an appearance on a Pink Floyd
recording previously, and none - save synthesizer - would in the near
future (P67).
So there is a big chance, according to Kopp, that this backwards 30
seconds track has been recorded by another group of musicians. Now who
recorded a lost twenty-minutes track for this movie, months before Pink
Floyd messed with it? None other than Syd Barrett, probably with
Brian 'Blinky' Davidson and Steve Peregrin Took. David Parker dug up the
EMI paperwork for this session in Random Precision. (Read all about it
at: The
Rhamadan – Committee Connection)
It is an interesting theory, to say the least. Kopp also pretends
Barrett's twenty minutes solo piece circulates amongst collectors, but
that's the first I have ever heard about that. Peter Jenner and Max
Steuer pretend not to have it in their archives and suspect the other
one to have ditched it. Unless, of course, it still resides in one of
Nick Masons' cupboards.
Estelle Miller (Mimsy Farmer) in More, during the Seabirds scene.
Seabirds
While Kopp is generally more argus-eyed than Hercule Poirot he surprised
me by not being aware of the Seabirds cock-up. In their ads for The
Early Years Pink Floyd Ltd. pretended to include an unreleased More
song, fans had been looking for for decades, called Seabirds. However,
these fans were unpleasantly surprised when they found out that the
Seabirds track in the collection was in fact another take on the
well-known Quicksilver
(from the same movie). The Pink Floyd management had to issue excuses,
but this was just another sign that the Floydian historians did a messy
and mediocre work while assembling the box. (See also: Supererog/Ation:
skimming The Early Years)
And so the book continues with surprising me on one, but disappointing
me on another page. On a concert on May 15th, 1970 in New Orleans, Roger
Waters had a throat problem and announced that 'Jude' would do the
screaming on Careful
With That Axe, Eugene. (And from Nick Sedgwick's autobiography we
know she could scream, see Roger
is always right.) This genuinely intrigues me, but that concert is
one I don't have on my 158 GB Pink Floyd bootleg folder (P139).
Trying to recover from that, Kopp doesn't seem to know, two pages later,
that David Gilmour also played the bass on Meddle's
One
Of These Days (P141).
Speak To Me
Actually, so I figured out while reading, this book isn't a biography
but an infomercial for The Early Years box. It's not that I didn't like
reading it but it omits too much biographical material to be of interest
for the 'average 'Pink Floyd fan. You know, those fans that don't know
what gems there are hidden in the Pink Floyd's pre-seventies catalogue.
The book clearly is written for people who already are aware of the
Floyd's history and their legacy. Pink Floyd is a legendary band and as
a NME journalist once described it:
The musicians go together like salt and vinegar on fish and chips - it
is that sort of tasteful relationship (P168).
This book has a lot of chips, salt and vinegar, but clearly not enough
fish. In my opinion it is very overpriced as well. But if you like
musical analysis and if you are a Floydian anorak and if
you think 35$ is not too much asked for a 200-pages book, be my guest
and grab it at your local book-store.
Many thanks to: Azerty, Hallucalation, Neonknight, Stanislav V. Grigorev. ♥
Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Solution: Steve O'Rourke was Pink Floyd's legendary manager, but
after they quit Blackhill Enterprises, that was Peter Jenner and Andrew
King (with the rest of the band). Back to text.
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Palacios, Julian: Syd
Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p. 207. Parker,
David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p.
119-123. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd,
3C Publishing, 2008, p. 74.
In September 2017 the Church was contacted by Robert Treadway who
informed us that he was involved in a movie project for which Paula
Christy and Marsha Allen had written a script.
That last name was the only one that rang a bell, Marsha Allen is a long
time member of the Birdie
Hop group and we may (or may not) have virtually encountered before
on other Barrett meeting places, like the now pretty comatose Late
Night. She also happens to be one of Iggy’s (many) followers.
By then Iggy had disappeared from the net for reasons we couldn’t
divulge, but we passed her a message from the movie makers. We know for
certain she was aware of it, that she was thrilled about the project and
that she was even willing to advise them.
Unfortunately, time ran short and communication between Iggy and the
movie team was lost forever on that dreary December day.
Scene from Pinked.
Now
Robert Treadway, after hearing the sad news of Iggy's passing, confirmed
us that they would move forward with the project and now, nearly a year
later, a teaser has been released for Pinked
– a Syd Barrett Film, on YouTube.
The movie makers enlisted the help of Jim Prues, of Panoptic
Media, who directed a number of campaign videos for Bernie Sanders
and others. The initial plan was to make a short promo movie to generate
financial backing and that is the version that was released now.
The actors were, according to our inside source, incredible, rising
above the material. Anthony Dain and Samantha Roman
studied Syd and Iggy in depth before starting their scenes. The lighting
director tried to get the feel and colour of The Madcap Laughs cover
shoot.
And, obviously, the floorboards had to be recreated as well.
Filmed in July 2018 it seems that an ‘angel
investor’ hasn’t showed up yet. The plan to turn the 8 minutes
trailer into a twenty to thirty minutes short has, we fear, been
postponed although there are rumours that they would like to start a
crowdfunding campaign.
Anthony Dain and Samantha Roman.
Pinked
Pinked - A Syd Barrett Film, Panoptic Media, 2018. Directed by Jim Prues.
Anthony Dain: Syd Barrett Samantha Roman: Iggy the Eskimo
Paula Christy: screenplay, executive producer Marsha Allen :
screenplay, executive producer
Length: 8 minutes 33 seconds.
Hear it and see it first and we'll talk about it afterwards...
Update:2018 12 08: the movie has been removed from YouTube
to correct the 'David Gilmore' error in the introduction, so we were
informed.
Syd's Out - Gilmore In.
Introduction
An off-screen voice telling us that Syd Barrett, co-founder of Pink
Floyd, has left the band and is planning to make a solo album. A fake
newspaper article shows us how a certain David Gilmore (sic) has
replaced Syd. We’re not certain if this error has been put in
deliberately or not, although newspapers (and record sleeves) have
misspelled his name before.
Scene 1a
A jealous Iggy complains that she saw Syd over at Gilmour’s den. Syd
explains that he was there because David (and Roger Waters) will produce
his first solo album. This scene is based upon Iggy’s story that she
once had a row with Syd at Gilmour’s flat, ruining the new Pink Floyd
album that was playing on a turntable. Notice the use of some of
Barrett’s lyrics in the dialogue.
Scene 1b
Syd gets angry at the fact that his band doesn’t want him any more and
that he has to go solo. Iggy seems to be unaware of the fact that Syd
started The Pink Floyd.
Scene 2
Syd painting and explaining to Iggy he can see colour and sound.
Scene 3
Syd proposing to paint on Iggy and wishing to make a child with her (a
true story, based upon the Mark Blake article about Iggy: The
Strange Tale Of Iggy The Eskimo Pt. 2).
The movie-set with painted floorboards & all.
Reception
Initial reactions from the fans are quite negative to say the least:
The bad script. The bad acting. The fact that Ig looks like a two-bit
Bollywood starlet. A lot of bad can be packed into 8 minutes.
What bothers most Sydiots is that the actors don’t move, talk and act
like their real-life counterparts.
Well, perhaps that is because it is a movie and a movie is the joined
vision of the director, the authors and the actors. And in true Floydian
tradition these visions may sometimes clash, compromises will have to be
made, budget problems will arise, etcetera... etcetera...
Samantha Roman. Picture: Marsha Allen.
The Reverend's Idea
Time for the Reverend to leave his pulpit and descend to the masses.
As one of those few privileged people who have spoken to Iggy (for
dozens of hours) I immediately remarked that the girl who plays her
doesn’t speak, doesn’t articulate, doesn’t react like the real Iggy
does/did. But that is not the point, this is not a documentary.
The plan is to make a movie about a Syd and an Iggy and that is all that
counts, even if it isn’t perfect and doesn’t fit with the image we have
from them.
I can vividly imagine how an excited Iggy would have reacted, in that
loud voice of her that could render any train horn useless.
“FELIX, THEY’RE MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT ME!”
And that’s all that matters.
Our Tumblr page has got some 30+ pictures, some slightly NSFW: Pinked.
Years ago the Reverend of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit wanted to
write the definitive article on Pink Floyd at the movies and stumbled –
literally – on hundreds
of films and television series that have used Pink Floyd tunes in one
way or another.
Even for the 60-70’s era there were dozens of movies to be checked out
and several of those were a bit too much in the flesh.
Perhaps one day we will publish that ultimate review of Alex
De Renzy’s social realistic hippie masterpiece Little
Sisters (1972) that has been sitting in our archives for years. It
is known for its excellent use of three different Pink Floyd tracks (and
a handful of others by Philip Glass, Carole King, Elvis Presley,
Santana,…) and has a psychedelic grimble grumblish gnome
popping out of nowhere, because you know… magic mushrooms. And that’s
only the SFW part.
Psychedelic Celluloid
The Reverend wasn’t the only one with this idea. In 2017 Simon
Matthews wrote a pretty decent film encyclopedia called ‘Psychedelic
Celluloid’ that lists 120 ‘sixties’ British movies with a pop or
rock connection. Needless to say that Pink Floyd shows up several times.
Currently Simon Matthews is working on a follow up of that book. (Read
our review here: Psychedelic
Celluloid.)
Psychedelic Celluloid only investigated ‘regular’ British movies and not
those underground flicks often made by the Cambridge Mafia that
surrounded the Pink Floyd. There are home or avant-garde movies by Nigel
Lesmoir-Gordon, Mick Rock,
Anthony Stern and Storm
Thorgerson and it seems only avid hardcore Floyd-fans have been
collecting and discussing these. (Look for a DVD anthology called Wondering
& Dreaming if you want to get started. We even have an interview
on here with the man who created this collection: Wondering
and Dreaming (a self-interview with Ewgeni Reingold).)
During his research Simon Matthews stumbled upon a Spanish underground
movie, allegedly using a Pink Floyd soundtrack, that he was unable to
locate: Salomé (see: Salomé
at Psychedelic Celluloid). The Holy Church also tried to unearth this
movie and even contacted its maker several times but unfortunately our
pathetic pleas were ignored with Spanish (or is that Valencian?)
arrogance. Or perhaps the maker was just timid. Or doesn’t speak English.
Let’s first find out something about him.
In 1970, so tells us IMDB, Rafael Gasent, the 'father' of independent
Valencian cinema, made a 51 minutes adaptation of the Oscar Wildeplay
(1891) and Richard Straussopera
(1905) Salomé.
According to the movie database the soundtrack
is composed by Richard Strauss, arranged by Pink Floyd and re-arranged
by Jorge Pi.
Rafael Gasent
Rafa Gasent, also known as Rafael Gassent and all permutations in
between, is an experimental Spanish movie maker whose 23 and some movies
are even more difficult to track down than those of Anthony Stern.
Salomé was allegedly shot in the Sagunto
castle, inspired by the Andy Warhol school of filming and is
apparently a blend of the hippie era and Spanish avant-garde 'grunge'
from the early seventies, whatever that may be.
Rafael Gasent, 2019.
Flavius Josephus
According to the Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus, Salomé
was a historical figure, daughter of Herodias,
the second wife of Herod
Antipas, who was the Roman tetrarch (ruler) of Galilee (Palestine)
from 4 BC to 39 AD. She gets a cameo appearance in the Bible for asking
the head of John
the Baptist on a platter, as a reward for a dance she did on her
stepfather’s birthday. Before his many guests, high officials and
military commanders, so it has been written in the Gospel
of Mark (6:14-29), king Herod couldn’t refuse her demand and he had
John the Baptist promptly executed.
Dance of the Seven Veils
In Christian tradition Salomé became the prototype of the lascivious
woman, seducing those poor defenceless men with her erotic Dance
of the Seven Veils, although that name was only invented by Oscar
Wilde about 18 centuries after the facts.
Oscar Wilde does not describe the dance itself, but others – before and
after him – did and as such Salomé became a role model for striptease
dancers around the world.
Salomé, as represented in Oscar Wilde’s play from 1891, ‘has been
perceived as much as a proto-feminist as the exemplary personification
of a devilish woman’ notes Tristan Grünberg in Salomé On Screen:
As such, the 1970s underground European cinema, characterized by its
rebellion against sexual repression and academic cinema, welcomed her
with open arms. From Germany (...) to Spain (Rafael Gassent and Pedro
Almodovar), from France (…) to England (…), Oscar Wilde’s play and main
character became an ethical and aesthetic emblem of avant-garde cinema.
Salome: behind the scenes.
Francisco Franco
In 1966, at 18 years old, Rafael Gasent was still a promising
award-winning scenographer and poster designer but at the turn of the
decade he wasn’t particularly liked any more by the general Franco
regime and his Opus
Dei cohorts.
After a brief run in some underground clubs his movie Salomé was seized
by the Spanish Tribunal
de Orden Público, a court created in Francoist Spain to deal
with political crimes. The movie, in its original form, hasn’t been seen
since.
Gasent wrote the script, based upon the interpretation of Oscar Wilde
and the operatic adaption of Richard Strauss. The story begins when
Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas, is accused by John the Baptist of
committing adultery. On the occasion of his birthday, Herod asks
Herodias's daughter, Salomé, to dance for his guests. As a reward, Herod
decides to grant Salomé a wish and she wishes for John the Baptist’s
head. Those were the days!
Salomé.
Salomé 2015
Around 2015 Gasent revised, re-imagined and reconstructed a new version
of the seventies movie, using material that could be traced back in
several archives, filmed in Super 8 and 16 millimetres. The 18 minutes
short (14 minutes without credits) was shown on the Mostra
de València - Cinema del Mediterrani festival in October 2018
and has been published on YouTube
as well.
Apparently the new version is more a meta-drama about a lost movie than
the movie itself. It breaks the fourth wall quite often by showing the
camera team and shots from behind the scenes. There is no real story,
scenes are explained by an off-screen voice and are interrupted by the Aubrey
Beardsley prints, that illustrated the first English edition of
Oscar Wilde’s play.
If the IMDB information that the original movie took 51 minutes is
correct then this revised version is about two thirds shorter than the
original. As such this is a very truncated and tinkered version,
necessary to expose the often silly – and at the same time, damaging –
censorship of the Franco regime.
Censorship
Under Franco movies could be censored if they went against the Spanish
traditional ‘cultural morality’ and Gasent’s production was at least
provocative on two different levels: it had some scarce female nudity
and it was having some mildly homo-erotic scenes.
Salomé 1970-2015 can be seen as a starting point for a discussion about
Spain’s painful past that some would like to see return in one form or
another.
John the Baptist.
Set The Controls
Now for the Pink Floyd content. At seven minutes into the movie Set
The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun sets in for something that
appears to be the Dance of the Seven Veils.
The same song is used a second time, shortly before the 14 minutes mark,
to show John the Baptist’s head, lying in the sand. But once again, as
the original movie is probably lost, we can’t be sure how that Pink
Floyd track was used in 1971.
Conclusion
If we may have learned a lesson about it all it is perhaps that it is
better to show movies than to hide them. If Pink Floyd Ltd and the
Cambridge Underground movie makers prefer to hide them in closets they
are not much better than the Franco censoring squads.
At least they still have the choice. Rafael Gasent didn't have that.
Salomé 1970 - 2015 by Rafael Gasent
Many thanks to: Rafael Gasent, Simon Matthews, Poliphemo. ♥ Libby ♥
Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the links above): Grünberg, Tristan : Salome
On Screen: Sensuality and Censorship, taken from: Performing Salome,
Revealing Stories (edited by Clair Rowden), Routledge, New York, 2016,
p.172.
In our collective memory the band called Zee
has required a top ten place in the 'albums you'd like to forget'
section, but of course that applies to a lot of those electro pop
outfits of the eighties. For every 'Fade
To Grey' there are at least a dozen of equivalent tracks that have
died an unnoticed death (anyone remembers Einstein
A Go-Go?). Even Kraftwerk,
those German electronic pioneers who are venerated more for the image we
have of them than for their actual recordings, issued something close to
a dud with Electric
Café (1986).
Synth-pop
and 'new
romantics' ruled in the eighties. Members of competing bands
regularly helped each other out, working together, creating
'supergroups' or side projects. Of course we had those bands where
members left because of musical differences, creating their own,
sometimes successful, incarnations. Early Human
League, for instance, split into Phil Oakey's highly lucrative band,
keeping the old name, and Heaven
17. That last one also had its own, well acclaimed, spin-off BEF
(British Electric Foundation).
Another example is musician Vince Clarke who started Depeche
Mode and ended up in Erasure.
In between he also had hits with Yazoo
(featuring Alison Moyet) and The
Assembly (with singer Feargal Sharkey from The Undertones). I'll
stop here because if I get started about those eighties bands and
artists this article will never end.
Elektrik Music
Putting 'big names' together doesn't always have the desired result. I
remember Elektrik
Music that was a collaboration between Karl
Bartos and Emil Schult (both from the Kraftwerk factory), Lothar
Manteuffel (from 'Neue Deutsche Welle' sensation Rheingold)
and Andy McCluskey (Orchestral
Manoeuvres in the Dark). Their Esperanto album wasn't exactly a
top-seller, perhaps because they couldn't decide what musical direction
to venture into. The single TV
was an excellent Kraftwerk leftover though and probably better than
anything that has left the Kling Klang studios ever since.
Roger Waters sacking Rick Wright from the band.
Writing On The Wall
Pink
Floyd fans got quite a shock when they found out, by checking the
credits on the back cover of The
Final Cut (1983), that Rick Wright no longer was a member of the
band. He was already absent on The
Wall sleeve, but so was Nick Mason, who was duly pissed off for that
and with valid reasons.
Next to the composers of the different tracks, The Wall’s inner sleeve
mentions a football team (that's soccer for you, Americans) of
collaborators, at least on my (European) vinyl copy, bought on the day
of its release: Bob Ezrin (producer/orchestra arrangements), Brian
Christian (engineer), Bruce Johnston (backing vocals), Islington Green
School (backing vocals), James Guthrie (co-producer/engineer), Jim Haas
(backing vocals), Joe Chemay (backing vocals), John McLure (engineer),
Jon Joyce (backing vocals), Michel Kamen (orchestra arrangements), Nick
Griffiths (engineer), Patrice Quef (engineer), Phil Taylor (sound
equipment), Rick Hart (engineer), Stan Farber (backing vocals) and Toni
Tennile (backing vocals). Roger Waters and David Gilmour are mentioned
as producers, not as musicians.
You could not find Nick Mason nor Richard Wright who were in the band
from a time they were called the T-Set.
It also needs to be said that there is another football team of session
musicians who weren’t mentioned on the sleeve: Blue Ocean (snare drums),
Bobbye Hall (congas/bongos), Chris Fitzmorris (voice), Clare Torry
(backing vocals), Frank Marrocco (concertina), Fred Mandel (Hammond
organ), Harry Waters (voice), Jeff Porcaro (drums), Joe (Ron) di Blasi
(classical guitar), Joe Porcaro (snare drums), Larry Williams
(clarinet), Lee Ritenour (rhythm and acoustic guitar), Trevor Veitch
(mandolin), Trudy Young (groupie) and Vicki Brown (backing vocals).
Neither were the 34 anonymous snare drum players, nor the members of the
New York Orchestra and New York Opera.
So when Roger Waters later claimed that A Momentary Lapse Of Reason was
a Pink Floyd forgery because of all the hired session musicians he must
have had a slight fit of selective indignation.
Surrogate Band
I won’t blame you for skipping the previous paragraph, that reads like
one of Roger Waters’ lesser lyrics, so let’s just summarise that from
the Pink Floyd personnel on The Wall only the composing and producing
group members were mentioned: David Gilmour and Roger Waters, and weird
enough no one spotted a discrepancy in that. On top of that, when The
Wall hit the road Wright would play next to the others, pretending as if
nothing had happened. A surrogate band member on a weekly wage and a
crate of Jack Daniels.
Wet Dream (1978).
Wet Dream
When the news leaked that Richard Wright had formed a new band this was
enough to make us jump enthusiastically in the air. In 1978 Wright had
made Wet
Dream with a dream-team of session musicians: Snowy White, Mel
Collins, Reg Isidore... The album went virtually unnoticed by the
general public, but prog or symph rock aficionados were well aware of
it. On Belgian national radio it was quite popular on a Wednesday
afternoon AOR show where the fantastic 'Mediterranean
C' was often tied with Gilmour's equally fantastic 'Mihalis'
from his first solo album that had appeared a couple of months earlier.
Pink Floyd had always been a faceless band in the seventies and as such
its individual members paid a price when they wanted to go solo,
although Gilmour's first did reach position 17 in England and 29 in the
USA. Not bad for an aspiring rock star, one might say, but not for a
Pink Floyd mogul. Rumours go that Gilmour rehashed his third solo album
into Floyd, asking Nick Mason and later Richard Wright to add their
names for legal reasons, with A
Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) as the multi-million-units-selling
result.
And now that we are gossiping: it appears that Pink Floyd repeated this
trick on The
Endless River (2014). While Gilmour added extra layers of guitar,
Nick Mason only entered the studio to put his signature under the
contract. The end product was frankensteined by a team of engineers and
producers. Even the sleeve was a fan-made mockery of a genuine Hipgnosis
/ Storm Thorgerson cover, although I doubt that anyone at Pink Floyd
(1987) Ltd. saw the irony in that.
Brave New 1984
Back to 1984, the heyday of new-romantic and synth-pop, showing us the
best and the worst of the genre. The hit-parade was populated by Alison
Moyet, Alphaville, Bananarama, Bronski Beat, Culture Club, Depeche Mode,
Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Howard Jones,
Limahl, Nik Kershaw, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Spandau Ballet,
The Thompson Twins, Ultravox and Wham!
Soon, so I hoped, another name would be added to that list, Zee, a
collaboration between Rick Wright and Dave Harris. Dave who? Here was
someone I had never heard of before.
Dave Harris (2019).
Dave Harris
Dave ‘De’ Harris was a member of the band Fashiøn
who had a UK top-10 album in 1982 called Fabrique,
although their singles only scratched the mid top-100. Previously it had
been a post-punk, new wave outfit called Fàshiön Music with an unhealthy
appetite for unnecessary diacritics, never a good sign. Fashiøn didn't
turn into the next Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet or Frankie Goes To
Hollywood what is now explained by claiming that their fusion of electro
and funk had been way ahead of their time. Tired of flogging a dead
horse Dave Harris was looking for new pastures:
Fashiøn was doing a small tour of East Coast America. I met up with Raff
Ravenscroft in New York and he mentioned that Rick was looking to start
a band and record an album. (…) I knew I was ready to split from Fashiøn
and so when I got back to London, Rick and I got together and after a
few meetings with other players, we decided to do the album together as
a duo.
Those other players, besides Dave Harris, were bass player John
McKenzie, Sky
drummer Tristan
Fry & sax virtuoso Raff
Ravenscroft. It is interesting that Ravenscroft is named here. He
appeared on The Final Cut, the Pink Floyd album without Rick Wright,
where he sessioned on Two
Suns In The Sunset, and on Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitch
Hiking. He also gigged with David Gilmour.
Wet Dream II
Initially Wright was looking for a traditional Floydian band, like the
one he had assembled on Wet Dream, but the love for experimental
synthesizers decided otherwise.
Remain In Light really knocked me out with all the cross-rhythms. The
bass never seems to come in where you’d expect it. If you want to hear
some incredible rhythmic things that are really working then the title
track’s the place to be. Of course I didn’t analyse it when I first
heard it, but I just knew that there was something different going on.
Eno does it all the time as well, which is probably why he and David
Byrne get on so well. I couldn’t stop playing Once In A Lifetime when I
first got the album, because it was the perfect example of that
fantastic Talking Heads trick where they combine quirkiness with a real
melodic ear. (Taken from: Rick
Wright’s Record Collection.)
One can understand why Rick went into business with Dave Harris:
He wanted a very electronic sound, which is why I think he wanted to
work with me.
The duo first started demoing with piano and acoustic guitar, but that
ended when they messed around with the Fairlight
synthesizer. Pink Floyd was enough of a household name to get an early
beta version of its sequencing software and both musicians immediately
felt like kids in a toy store. To quote Dave Harris:
It gave us a complete new way of composing.
Despite the age difference and a different musical background their
minds 'clicked' and Wright invited Dave Harris and family in his home
studio in England where they experimented and composed for eighteen
months. Sort of.
Franka & Rick Wright (AMLOR tour).
Qupido
Here is where the Church’s story goes astray from the official
romanticized version that is told nowadays. It is – as usual – the
opinion of the Reverend and not the one of Pink Floyd, nor Zee, its
members, spouses, relatives or groupies.
Once the initial and exciting stage of experiment was over Rick Wright
lost interest and was less and less available. Dave Harris tried to
persuade Rick to play the Hammond on the record.
Getting him to do it was a nightmare.
Wright had a fair share of business meetings to attend to, but also had
two divorces to cope with, both on a personal and financial level. One
with his ex-wife Juliette, who was apparently still around although they
weren't a couple any more, the other with his ex-band Pink Floyd. Apart
from that Wright would often disappear to supervise 'work' on his
sailboat in Greece. It was soon found out the Fairlight was not the only
organ he liked to experiment with.
In an interview with The
Mail On Sunday from July 2016, Franka Wright tells how she met Rick
at the Qupi bar in Lindos.
I was not interested in him but I could feel his blue eyes on me all the
time. (…) He eventually broke up my marriage by telling my
already suspicious husband that he was madly in love with me.
They became a couple in 1982, dividing their time between Wright’s homes
in New York, Nice, London, Greece and his boat, before marrying on
Rhodes in 1984. She also testifies how Rick 'indulged in every
conceivable rock cliché throughout their relationship, from taking
industrial quantities of drugs [and alcohol] to sleeping with endless
groupies'.
Rick didn’t talk too much about why he left the band, except to say he
was fed up with Waters’s ego.
Rick did not only not talk to Roger Waters, when the couple bumped into
David Gilmour on Lindos 'both men studiously ignored each other'. That
Wright was in a bad shape was clear to her:
When we met, he had only one pair of jeans, his personal hygiene was
questionable, and his house in Knightsbridge was shambolic.
Madcap Revisited
So here we have a member of a successful band who is thrown out for not
pulling his weight during the recording sessions. He then disappears in
relative obscurity and lives a life of booze, drugs and an endless list
of groupies.
At first he is enthusiast about making a solo album, but after a few
months he leaves the work to others and needs to be forced to carry on.
To get rid of the pressure he escapes to a holiday island in smelly
jeans…
Sounds vaguely familiar isn’t it?
Dave Harris, in a May 2019 Triple
Threat interview stays polite about the behaviour of his bandmate:
I don’t think music was his main priority. I think his happiness was his
main priority although we were doing stuff. He had a lot of other
personal things going on. (…) The eighties was a time of
cocaine. It was around and it was probably a problem, looking back, for
both of us. (…) His biggest drug was smoking. You never saw him
without a cigarette.
It has been hinted that the deteriorating of Rick’s singing voice over
the years was due to his nicotine addiction.
Do you like diacritics?
Confusion
Meanwhile Dave Harris, who didn't have an endless supply of money, felt
he had an album to finish. A trip to France, supposedly to write lyrics,
turned into a fortnight of them 'getting pissed' and no work done. In
the end all song texts ended up written by Harris.
Lead vox: Dave Harris. Guitars: Dave Harris. Main keyboards,
percussion and Fairlight programming: Dave Harris. Album title
(Identity): Dave Harris.
Even the name for the band, Zee, was Dave’s decision.
How did I come up with the band’s name. It’s really stupid, I said to
Rick what about Zee? It’s some sort of a final thing and I love how
Americans say zee for zed. And it’s nothing… just Zee.
Unfortunately the Identity sleeve was also done by him, resulting in an
overdose of röck döts thät mäde thé tèxt löök räthèr wäcký. Did I
already tell you that an abundant use of unnecessary diacritics never is
a good sign for an album?
I would agree, that the album sounded ahead of its time apart from the
Floyd fans who weren’t going to like it, however it turned out!
That’s also a way to describe it. Actually the album sounded dated the
day it came out. Kate Bush (1980), Peter Gabriel (1982) and dozens of
others had already experimented with the Fairlight, so Zee weren't
really pioneers of the 'orchestra in a box'. The Fairlight was so
omnipresent on every day's records that Phil Collins found it necessary
to put a warning on his No
Jacket Required album (1985) that there was no Fairlight on the
record. It was the auto-tune of the eighties.
Zee 1984 (picture: Peter Ashworth).
Opinions
The question is if Identity would have sounded differently with Richard
Wright at the helm. One thing we will never know. What we do know was
that Rick Wright was pretty positive at first. Dave Harris:
Rick wanted to do a follow up album straight away, we had done some work
at his house in the south of France and he had the idea to move
everything down there and start the next album. (…) Obviously I wasn’t
as financially well off as Rick and couldn’t afford to take another year
off writing a new album.
Dave Harris took a production job (for Limahl’s first solo album Don’t
Suppose) and the duo went separate ways, which lead to some problems
with a temperamental Rick. They never spoke to each other ever since.
Rick Wright changed his opinion about Identity:
Zee was a disaster, an experimental mistake, but it was made at a time
in my life when I was lost.
And although Dave Harris now looks back with tenderness he wasn’t that
positive either:
Everything we did ended up sounding like a fucking robot.
Of course one can’t deny the album sounds pretty dated nowadays.
The thing is, the Fairlight was the sound of its time and that made the
album sound its time.
One of the good things of Facebook and the internet in general is that
people have become more accessible. Dave Harris learned that quite a few
people did not implicitly hate the album.
It seems now though thanks to social media and the world being so much
smaller, there are a lot of Floydians who did like it at the time and
still do.
Identity 2017 tracklist with 'Before The Sun Is Gone'.
Before The Sun Is Gone
As the album had never been issued on CD (legally) it was about time to
remaster and re-release it. Dave Harris even 'reconstructed' a demo
"Before the Sun is Gone" to be included as a bonus.
Rick and I started it together as a demo, but it was put aside as with a
lot of tracks when you are making an album. But the chord sequence has
always stayed with me, and the best we could do was to try and emulate
Ricks style of playing (impossible)! But we did the best we could.
While the Wright heirs initially agreed with the extra track this was
later revoked.
The track ‘Before the sun is gone’ has been taken off... due to a
decision by Gala and Jamie Wright. They wanted the album as it was in
1984 without any extra tracks, but I will be releasing the 7” and 12” of
‘Confusion’ and the B-side ‘Eyes of a gypsy' as a bonus CD. I will be
looking to release ‘Before the sun is gone' after the album has been
released. Very strange decision, I know the fans of Zee would have loved
to hear any unreleased music. Never mind. (Facebook, 20 July 2018.)
Dave Harris' explanation is a bit simple. On an early track-listing for
the Identity 2017 album the new track is copyrighted to Harris/Fishman
(without Rick Wright). The keyboard player on this salvaged track is
Paul Fishman from Re-Flex, from The Politics Of Dancing fame. Adding a
new track (without Rick Wright) would have meant renegotiating the
copyrights for this album, adding a bit more to Harris and Paul Fishman
and a bit less to Wright. If we may be sure of one thing it is that Pink
Floyd (and their members, heirs and lawyers) never liked to share a
slice of the pie.
(It gets even more complicated when you realize that the B-side of the
'Confusion' single and maxi-single 'Eyes Of A Gypsy' was originally
copyrighted to Dave Harris alone.)
Zee 2017 cover.
Zee 2017
As a company Pink Floyd has never been acknowledged for its swiftness
and efficacity. Dealing with them is like the hopping procession of
Echternach where the pilgrims move three steps forward and two backwards.
Their own Early Years box-set was twenty years in the making and even
then it had to be rushed in the end with some disastrous results if we
may believe some reviews. (See: Supererog/Ation:
skimming The Early Years)
It took over a decade for the Floyd-machine to clear the copyrights for
the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band, with a guest appearance from
Syd Barrett, after they tried to bury the tape in their archives. (Read
that story at: The
Last Minute Put Together Reel Story)
Dave Harris already announced the birth of the ‘new’ Zee in March 2017
and to his own frustration he saw that thanks to the Floyd’s inefficacy
to move things forward 2017 went by, then 2018, then the first half of
2019.
That is not all. Once the record was cleared by the Floyd monster
disaster after disaster hit the release.
1. Pledge Music
Originally the deluxe version of the record was going to be distributed
by Pledge Music, but Dave Harris warned buyers in January that the
company was heading for bankruptcy. He recommended to cancel the orders
and to place it at Burning Shed instead. Luckily Pledge Music refunded
most cancelled orders, but fans who didn’t cancel on time lost their
money as Pledge Music stopped business in May 2019.
2. Burning Shed
In March 2019 Burning Shed cancelled all orders with the following text:
We are sorry to say that the release date for this has been put back at
least two months. As a result we have decided that it would be better
to remove this item from sale and refund your order rather than making
you wait for something that may well be delayed again. We apologise
for any inconvenience and we will issue a refund shortly.
It was later confirmed by Dave Harris that there have been some
‘misunderstandings’ between them, probably money matters.
3. Amazon
Dave Harris then tried to sell the record through Amazon. While this was
working on the British and American branches the release was not
available at the European websites. So a fourth partner had to be looked
for.
4. Music Glue
Last but not least another webshop was suggested by Dave: Music Glue,
although they could only deliver the goods with over a month’s delay.
But one sunny day in the month of June 2019 it finally arrived at
Atagong mansion.
Zee 2019 box-set cover.
Zee 2019
Identity 2019 has been remastered from the final mix as the multi-track
tapes have disappeared over the years (and that would have meant a
remix), but obviously what has been found has been cleaned for this
digital release. This CD sounds crispier as ever.
The 2019 version of this album comes in different shapes and formats. A
‘limited edition’ box set, autographed by Dave Harris, contains a
booklet, a poster, promo pictures, flyers and a slightly boasting press
release blurb from EMI. (See the unboxing of Zee at our Tumblr
or Imgur
pages.)
ZEE is a long-term project for us, there is no question of just
releasing the one album and that being it.
The box set has an extended version of the album, adding the 7 and 12
inch singles (and its B-sides). An extra CD contains 5 ‘Rough Mixes’
that are pretty close to the final release, but not quite yet. Several
of these songs sound less ‘robotic’ than on the 1984 record. They come
from a cassette that a friend of Dave Harris had in his cupboard for 35
years.
Zee Rough Mixes (original cassette).
How does Identity sound 35 years after it has been made? Let's be
honest, this is not the world's most venerable electro-pop album, but
actually it is not as bad as many people told it was. I wouldn't go as
far as calling it a forgotten masterpiece, but it has acquired a certain
'cult' status though.
The best way to take in the album, in my humble opinion, is with a
maximum of two or three tracks per session. After that it starts to get
tedious. Not only the Fairlight is to blame for that, but also Dave
Harris' monotonous singing voice that I am quite allergic to, I have to
confess.
Time to start! Let's have one of those fantastical Holy Church of Iggy
the Inuit reviews, shall we? (This review is based upon a comparison of
the POTWCD001 needle-drop of the album, our vinyl copies, singles and
maxi-singles and the 2019 remaster.)
Rick Wright at the Zee sessions (picture: Tim Palmer).
Zee - Identity
Confusion (4:14)
First track and the obligatory single (somewhat shorter: 3:37) of the
album, also released in one of those dreaded 12-inch maxi-versions
(6:21) that haunted the eighties. It needs to be said that Dave Harris'
previous band, Fashiøn, was one of the pioneers of the extended single
format, creating alternative remixes of their regular songs, so it might
be interesting to compare the different versions.
Confusion is (apparently) an attempt to mimic Fashiøn's electro-funk and
as such the contrast with the Pink Floyd sound couldn't be greater.
Actually the track is pretty good but it didn't stand a chance in the
charts, against the Bronski Beats and others, not that the other Floyds
fared any better. David Gilmour's horrendous Blue Light never made it
into the UK Top-100 and Roger Waters' 5:01 AM The Pros and Cons of Hitch
Hiking stranded at 76.
As far a I can hear there is no Rick on this track and people who were
expecting the lazy lounge jazz of Mediterranean C may have been very
confused indeed.
The maxi-single is a pretty messed up version that adds a blend of
Kraftwerkian rhythms and Donkey Kong effects, before and after the song
and as such this is pretty standard 'extended' eighties stuff. The
single version seems to have some extra blips and tocs here and there,
but as you have already figured out for yourself, is about half a minute
shorter than the album version. This version fades out, rather than
ending abruptly.
The deluxe version of the album has a Rough Mix of this track (4:20),
but the difference with the album version is minimal (or even
non-existent).
Voices (6:24)
Undoubtedly the best – read: Floydian - track on the album and one that
breathes Rick Wright in and out. Dave Harris' voice is sequenced in such
a way it could be mistaken for his colleague and that is why several
fans – over the years – have insisted that Rick did sing some of the
songs, which isn't the case. Rick's backing vocals are quite prominent
though (or at least, that is what I have always thought).
In my opinion the track could've benefited from an even more Floydian
approach, more repeating echoes for instance and more Floydian musique
concrète sound effects.
The deluxe version of the album has a (pretty interesting) Rough Mix of
this track (6:15).
Zee re-issue contract.
Private Person (3:36)
The Floydian atmosphere is absent on Private Person, although lack of
communication is a theme that has been preoccupying Pink Floyd on
several of their (post-Waters) songs. The text is open to interpretation
and could be a description of the faltering Wright – Harris relation
during the recording of the album, but could of course also be
extrapolated towards Rick's marriage problems and/or his situation with
his old band.
We may talk, but you don't listen You twist a tale and loose the
comprehension Seems communication is missing In everything I say
The fact that Wright never revealed his feelings during the making of
the album duly frustrated Harris, who had to finish most songs on his
own.
I also realised I had no idea what he actually thought of what I was
doing, as he never told me.
Not a bad song though, for an album track.
The 1984 version of this track has about a second of synthesised wind
noise before the drum beat kicks in. This is missing on the 2019
version, apparently an oversight from the remastering team. (Source:
Steve Bennett, 19 May 2019)
The deluxe version of the album has a Rough Mix of this track (3:28).
Strange Rhythm (6:37)
Opinion 1: One of those tracks where the Fairlight experimenting goes
around the bend and where Harris' monotonous voice messes up the song.
Too long, too dull, too boring.
Opinion 2: When listening to this song on its own it obtains a certain
mesmerising charm, but it is nevertheless an album track that doesn’t
fulfil its potential.
The deluxe version of the album has a Rough Mix of this track (6:14).
Zee 2018 announcement.
Cuts Like A Diamond (5:39)
First track of Side B. The song starts intriguing enough, with an intro
that made me remotely think of Together In Electric Dreams (Philip Oakey
& Giorgio Moroder) that was a 1984 big hit. It is a slow evolving track
that profits from an interesting guitar solo in the middle. Also here I
have the impression that it could’ve evolved into something brilliant,
if only Rick Wright would’ve put more of his magic on it.
The deluxe version of the album has a Rough Mix of this track (5:24).
By Touching (5:40)
First opinion: the intro of the song doesn't promise anything good and
perhaps the song isn't that bad, but the multiple Fairlight effects and
Harris' humdrum singing are getting too much for me.
Second opinion: after listening to this song as a stand-alone track, it
seems to be quite all-right if one manages to ignore the obvious
eighties ubiquities. Decent guitar solo at the end but all in all too
repetitive and too long.
How Do You Do It (4:43)
This could've been a second single as it tries hard to be a
bass-slapping funky tune à la Level 42 with according meaningless
lyrics. Not bad if you are in that kind of thing.
Seems We Were Dreaming (5:07)
A song about a dream must start with obligatory wind chimes, even if
they have probably been generated – it gets boring, I know – by
electronics. Although buried at the end of side two this is another
highlight with a Floydian feel. Just like in Voices Dave Harris' voice
has been sequenced to vaguely sound like Wright's.
The middle has a storming Floydian keyboard solo, for once not on a
Fairlight, but on a Hammond, that could have found its place on A
Momentary Lapse Of Reason. As a matter of fact this song would not have
sounded out of place on that Pink Floyd come-back record, that was
unfortunately also suffering from an eighties boom boom tchak
approach. Call it the booger sugar syndrome that was hitting musicians
all over the world and I’m not only talking about keyboard players this
time.
This could’ve been a killer track, if only.
Another Zee 2018 announcement.
Eyes Of A Gypsy (4:13)
Issued as an extra track on the cassette version of the album and the
B-side of the Confusion single. It also exists in a dub remix for the
12-inch. This track was originally credited to Dave Harris alone and he
has confirmed it was written and recorded in a hurry (and without Rick
Wright) because the record company wanted an extra track.
On the 2019 re-release the copyrights have been changes to Wright /
Harris, for whatever reason.
It is another attempt at a Fashiøn-like-electro-funk-dance-tune and is
not that bad even for a throwaway track.
The so-called dub version of the song, that could be found on the 12
inch, is what it is, an almost completely instrumental remix with even
more reverb than the original. It suffers from the typical eighties
maxi-single remix syndrome.
Confuclusion
So far for the album. It hasn't been all that bad when you listen to it
from an eighties electro-pop point of view. Of course fans who were
expecting Wet Dream II (that breathed a Wish You Were Here atmosphere)
may have been unpleasantly surprised and I can understand that they must
have felt more at ease with About Face and The Pros and Cons of Hitch
Hiking.
I always have had a soft spot for this album that already carried the
seeds for Rick Wright’s experimental and avant-gardist Broken China
(1996) that was also written and recorded as a duo (with Anthony Moore).
With this release it has finally gotten the attention it deserves.
Bonus Interview
Thanks for reading until the end of this article. Here's a little bonus
for you. A Rick Wright promo interview from March 1984.
Life after Floyd from A to Zee. March 1984.
More pictures can be found at our Tumblr
or Imgur
pages.
Many thanks to: Steve Bennett, Nino Gatti, Dave Harris, Wolfpack, Franka
Wright. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the links above): Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly,
Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 309-311. Boddy, Paul: Missing
in Action: FASHIØN @ Electricty Club, 2017. Johnson, Angela: The
dark side of Pink Floyd: Keyboardist Rick Wright's ex wife tells of
the constant cheating with groupies, drugs and torrid rows which went on
behind the scenes @ Mail Online, 2016. Kopp, Bill: Songs
In The Key of Zee: Identity at 35 @ Rock And Roll Globe, 2019. Liam
C: Richard
Wright : AFG Exclusive Interview With Zee Co-Founder Dave Harris @ A
Fleeting Glimpse, 2018. Triple Threat: EXCLUSIVE!!!
Interview with Dave Harris - Identity 2019 @ YouTube, 2019. Yeeshkul:
Zee
reissue?, 2017.
Musicians, rockers, pop artists,... - name them like you want – live in
a bi-focused, nearly schizophrenic world and need to cultivate
dissociative identities if they want to survive and stay successful.
Just like there are two distinct forms of copyright there are two quasi
contradictory sides representing the same artist. Alfa and omega, yin
and yang, art and product, band and brand.
Let's get to the point because the above intro sounds like one of those
oriental religions that were so popular in the psychedelic sixties.
What I am writing about is the difference between rock music as 'art'
and rock music as 'product'. While an artist regards his latest release
as 'art', his or her record company invariably defines it as 'product'.
For record company executives it makes no difference if they are selling
The Dark Side Of The Moon or a singing trout, as long as it keeps on
paying for their daily dose of chemical stimulants.
Pink Floyd is so big nowadays, despite being mainly in the recycling
business since the end of the last century, that it has evolved from a
band into a brand. They are now their own record label, reducing the
EMI's and CBS's of this world to mere distributors of their product.
When David Gilmour was asked by MTV (in 1987) why the Roger Waters album
and tour (Radio KAOS) was not as successful as the Pink Floyd one (A
Momentary Lapse of Reason) he came up with the following business-mogul
explanation...
The reason is that we’ve all spent... well he [Nick Mason] spent over 20
years. I spent nearly 20 years working on, building up, the Pink Floyd
name. I mean, if you liken it to basic crass of advertising… You know if
someone left Coca Cola and started up his own soft-drink company with
the same recipe it wouldn’t sell as many. It’s very simple.
Unfortunately, protecting the brand can have a few disadvantages.
Sometimes these are unintentionally funny, like that one time the Pink
Floyd company deleted a video from the official David Gilmour website
for 'copyright' infringements. There is a less savoury side as well. To
fully monetise on the release of 'The Early Years' box the Pink Floyd
copyright police deleted dozens of YouTube movies, including 'Nightmare'
of psychedelic curiosity Arthur
Brown – on his own YouTube channel
– just because they legally could. Can Mr. Gilmour and his leprechaun Paul
Loasby please explain us how this marginally known performer was a
financial threat to the multi-million dollar machine that is Pink Floyd?
For the last couple of decades Pink Floyd has been recycling old stuff,
sometimes adding unreleased material to the default product. Just a
quick list of compilations and live albums since the late eighties:
Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988), Shine On (1992), Pulse (1995), The
First Three Singles (1997), Is There Anybody Out There (2000), Echoes
(2001), Oh, By The Way (2007), Discovery (2011), Dark Side Of The Moon
Immersion & Experience (2011), Wish You Were Here Immersion & Experience
(2011), A Foot in the Door (2011), The Wall Immersion & Experience
(2012), Their First Recordings (2015),…
There were also 30 and 40 years anniversary editions of The Piper At The
Gates Of Dawn and The Early Years box-set with its 33 discs, although I
have never counted them.
These editions are all of the original or classic line-up and it may
have itched a bit at the Gilmour camp that the third and final
incarnation of the band, the one without Roger Waters, has never had a
separate compilation. Well, that is soon going to change.
A Momentary Lapse on the road.
Coming Back To Life
Diet Floyd has existed from 1987 with the release of A
Momentary Lapse of Reason, until 2014 with the release of The
Endless River. That is a total of 27 years or nearly the double in
time than the classic line-up that existed from 1968 with the release of
the second album A
Saucerful of Secrets until 1983 with Waters’ swansong The
Final Cut.
Alright, alright, I hear you coming. It is not that the band was very
productive in their third incarnation. The classic line-up of Floyd made
eleven albums in fifteen years, Diet Floyd just three in 27, not
counting the two live ones. On top of that The Endless River could be
considered as just another compilation or out-takes album. Basically,
Diet Pink Floyd has been in a state of hibernation after 1995 and for
nearly two decades only recycled material from the classic heydays has
been re-released. The box-sets Oh,
By The Way (2007) and Discovery
(2011) for instance contain the same 14 albums, and only people with a
high-end stereo installation will pretend to hear the difference. How
many times can you remaster an album, anyway? It’s not bloody washing
powder.
Back to basics. It doesn’t matter if Diet Floyd existed for 8 (1995, Pulse),
19 (2006, On
An Island) or 27 years. What does matter is that David Gilmour wants
to replenish his pension fund now that he has given a small fortune away
by selling his guitars for charity.
What is more of importance, what is still lying in the vaults that
hasn’t already been (officially) leaked, one way or another.
Let’s have a small history lesson, shall we?
Pink Floyd duo, later trio. (Later editions of 'Lapse' have Wright
photoshopped next to the two others.) Tinkering: Felix Atagong.
A New Machine
Around 1985 David Gilmour was thinking of resuscitating Pink Floyd with
Nick Mason. There are two main reasons for this, one was the public’s
disinterest in Gilmour’s solo-career, a second reason was that
contractually Pink Floyd still had to make an album with important
financial consequences if they didn’t.
As Waters refused to work any longer with the two others he was –
legally and financially – obliged to hand over the Pink Floyd brand to
the drummer and the new boy, although it took a while for this bad news
to sip in.
Previously Gilmour had been jamming with Jon
Carin for a third solo album but when the call for Floyd product
became louder, he contacted Phil
Manzanera (Roxy Music) and super-producer Bob
Ezrin. Not all collaborators brought in suitable material, Eric
Stewart (10CC) and writer and poet Roger
McGough, who had worked on the Yellow Submarine movie with The
Beatles, were invited, but their input didn’t lead to a valid concept
(although some demos do exist).
Record executives weren’t that happy either and when David Gilmour sent
four tracks over to CBS he was informed that ‘this music doesn’t sound a
fucking thing like Pink Floyd’, something that made Roger Waters
chuckle. Apparently, Gilmour’s New Coke didn’t taste at all like Waters’
Classic Coca Cola.
Carole Pope, Rough Trade.
Avoid Freud
David Gilmour understood the message and he and his collaborators had
the difficult task to give the existent material a much needed Floydian
treatment. One possibility was to forcibly turn these tracks into a
concept. Carole
Pope (from the somewhat underrated band Rough Trade) was flown over
from Canada and at least one song was tried out, Peace Be With You,
‘a nice, mid-tempo thing about Roger Waters’. When this experiment
failed (again) David Gilmour gave up looking for a portmanteau.
It would be a regular album without a storyline, like in the pre-Dark
Side Of The Moon days. Anthony
Moore (Slapp Happy, Henry Cow) was called in, co-writing the lyrics
on three songs. One of those, Learning
To Fly, was the much needed turning point. The sound effects,
provided by Nick Mason, the guitar, keyboards and vocals felt like a
real Pink Floyd song (although one set in the eighties and still without
Rick Wright).
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was the Diet Floyd’s showcase that they
could exist without Roger Waters, although – in retrospect – it wasn’t a
band’s album at all. Co-director Nick Mason had given the drum parts to Carmine
Appice and Jim
Keltner and the list of keyboard players shows that Rick Wright’s
name had been added for legal and public relations reasons, not for his
musical input. David Gilmour, talking about Lapse in a 1994 Mojo:
We went out last time with the intention of showing the world. ‘Look
we’re still here’, which is why we were so loud and crash-bangy. Echoes,
p. 260
Crash-bangy indeed. The Lapse-album suffered from a digital eighties
production, David Gilmour admitted. Nick Mason was unhappy that he had
been made redundant by a drum computer and a couple of session players
and planned to re-record the drum parts. The same can be said about Rick
Wright’s input, who only entered the studio when the album was nearly
finished and after his wife's plea to take him back aboard. Keyboard
parts from live shows were inserted to replace the 80’s synths.
Although the above rumours started in 2011 the revised album was never
released, but this will change in November 2019 when it will be an
exclusive part of The Later Years boxset.
La Carrera Panamericana.
A Day At The Races
David Gilmour was a busy bee in the early nineties, he made four
(unreleased) soundtracks, with or without the help of Rick and Nick:
Ruby Takes A Trip (1991), The Art Of Tripping (1993), Colours of
Infinity (1995) and La Carrera Panamericana (1992). That last one
contained the first Rick Wright and Nick Mason co-compositions since
Dark Side Of The Moon / Wish You Were Here. The Colours of Infinity
soundtrack has the complete band jamming, lends several themes from Ruby
and Art of Tripping and has been partially recycled for The Endless
River.
La Carrera Panamericana is an oddball in the Pink Floyd canon. It has
been well documented that Nick Mason and the Pink Floyd manager Steve
O’Rourke were (are) historic car racing enthusiasts, a hobby
for multimillionaires with too much time and money on their hands. In
1991 they could cajole David Gilmour into entering the 7-day Carrera
Panamericana race that ran over 2800 km in Mexico. (Rick Wright,
according to Nick, was asked as well but preferred sailing the seven
seas.)
Not only did they plan to have some fun racing cars, but an inventive
Steve O’Rourke, always the hustler, managed to pre-sell the rights for a
documentary about the race, with Pink Floyd music, recouping the costs
of the expedition. (A side effect is that Gilmour, Mason and O'Rourke
look like walking billboards, pretending to be cool.)
Disaster struck on the third day when the C-type Jaguar of the Gilmour /
O’Rourke team missed a bend near the city of San Luis Potisi. Gilmour
was relatively unharmed but O’Rourke had broken his legs and their race
was over. Both were extremely lucky, the band could have literally died
that day. But, business is business and the promised movie had to be
made with two protagonists out of the race and only the least flamboyant
member left to save the furniture.
Steve O'Rourke completely confident in David Gilmour's driving skills.
The movie is not one that will be remembered for its ingenuity, but if
you like vintage cars and flimsy interviews it might be worth checking
it out, once. The (new) music isn’t that spectacular either, but as one
of only four original products Pink Floyd produced in their later career
many fans feel this should be a required item in the box set. Yet it
will not be included, not as a DVD / Blu-ray, nor as audio.
Keleven at Yeeshkul put it this way:
Omitting La Carrera Panamericana is really disappointing because this
seemed like the absolute last opportunity ever to get that music out,
and there are some really nice tunes on it unavailable in any format
that doesn't have people talking over it from the movie. And this is a
set covering a 30-year period that had a total of four releases of new
material, yet they decided to skip one of them.
Probably Gilmour is afraid that we will all laugh with his driving
skills, nearly killing his manager in the process. A scenario even Roger
Waters didn't dare to dream of.
Later Years artwork.
Video killed the radio stars
But what is in this ruddy box then? It will be mainly focused on video
material and live concerts, claiming to have six hours of unreleased
audio and seven hours of unreleased video, including the mythical Venice
1990 concert. Also included is the Knebworth Silver Clef show with guest
star Candy Dulfer. Those two shows are nice to have obviously, but they
are not particularly rare amongst collectors. I have them both in legal
and less legal releases.
It’s all a bit random actually. There will be a revised Pulse
movie, with added and re-edited content, but not the Pulse CD. For that
other live album Delicate Sound Of Thunder, both movie and audio
versions will be present, remixed and with added material. But, and I
will try not to be too overtly cynical, it will not have Welcome To The
Machine (on video) for the only reason that this would give more
copyrights to… Roger Waters. I kid you not, the Gilmour Waters feud is
still alive and kicking. Just imagine these two slightly demented rock
stars mud wrestling about a song about being nobody’s fool.
Calling it an 18-disc set is of course not wrong, but it needs to be
said that the 5 DVDs in the set duplicate the videos on the Blu-rays,
and those Blu-rays more or less duplicate the audio that are on the CDs.
Weird as well is that there is no regular Division Bell CD, but
the 2014 5.1 mix will be included on Blu-ray. The same goes for The
Endless River that has been turned into a movie experience, like The
Wall or The Final Cut video EP. I seriously wonder what will be the
added value of that.
There is also a bunch of music and ‘mister screen’ movies included, but
as far as I can remember the Pink Floyd phenomenon mainly turned around
music, not around video clips. One thing I would like to see is the Pink
Floyd documentary that was shown before the Knebworth concert,
containing the Syd Barrett and Iggy the Eskimo home movies that have
been reviewed here over a decade ago. I can only hope these will turn
up, in one form or another. (See: Love
in the Woods (Pt. 1) & Love
In The Woods (Pt. 2))
The Endle$$ River, fanart by Rocco Moliterno.
Outtakes, demos and alternative versions
Probably there was a plan to include a CD with ‘later years’ outtakes,
demos and alternative versions, but this has been reduced to 6 tracks (4
‘new’ ones and early versions of Marooned and Nervana). Several tracks
that were originally intended to be in the box have been removed at a
later stage, presumably by Mr. Gilmour himself, including the already
mentioned Peace Be With You and early versions of One Slip and Signs Of
Life. And unless something drastically changes the ambient suite The
Big Spliff will forever reside in one of the Pink Floyd dungeons.
Giving none away
That some product is missing in this box is one thing. That the initial
selling price is well over 500 dollar another. This means that each disc
in the set, not counting the doubles, costs over 40 dollar. I wouldn’t
mind paying 40 dollar for the revised Momentary Lapse Of Reason record,
but in this case you have to come up with 500 dollars for the one record
you really want and some extra discs that each contain 80% of easy
obtainable material. It is like selling yesterday’s lunch at a higher
price than the day before. Or if we may use David Gilmour's comparison:
it is like selling New Coke at double the price than the classic one.
Of course Pink Floyd may ask whatever it wants for its music. At least
they have always released product of the highest quality, right?
Wrong.
Pink Floyd 'Early Years' Blu-ray with bit rot.
Bit Rot
Recently it has been found out that Blu-rays from The Early Years suffer
from bit rot. Bubbles appear on its surface making them unplayable.
People who were trying to have them replaced, as a matter of fact this
box set only dates from 2016, have been politely advised by the record
company to go fuck themselves. I'm lost for words.
This is not the first time that Pink Floyd doesn’t deliver. Many
Immersion sets had quality problems, the Shine On box had a book that
ended its last page in mid-sentence and a few decades ago Pink Floyd
even issued 'remastered' CDs that weren't remastered at all. That was –
to use another Floydian term – a pretty fair forgery.
As a Floyd fan since the mid seventies a part of me screams, take my
money and give me the box, but – and that is a first for me - another
part is sincerely doubting if it is really worth it. Perhaps this is the
time to seriously reconsider my lifelong relationship with the Floyd.
To quote RonToon, that Jedi master of all things pink:
Gilmour is very generous when it comes to charities but there is no
charity for his fans.
Pink Floyd may be a great band, but has turned into an unreliable brand.
Some pros and cons of The Later Years:
PROS: A Momentary Lapse of Reason remix (stereo and 5.1) - Delicate
Sound of Thunder concert on audio and video, remixed and complete - A
few Division Bell demos and outtakes - Knebworth 1990, full concert, on
audio and video - Previously unreleased documentaries and other material
- Previously unreleased Venice 1989 on video - Restored Pulse on video -
Screen films, music videos. Arnold Layne, live at The Barbican on 10 May
2007, the Floyd's last performance ever (not on CD unfortunately).
CONS: The price per disc is outrageous, plus there are a lot of doubles.
Missing: Live 8, remember Live8? - The Knebworth pre-show documentary,
starring Langley Iddens and Iggy the Eskimo - A Momentary Lapse of
Reason demos (present on ‘early’ track listings, but removed afterwards)
- Alternate single and promo mixes, from A Momentary Lapse of Reason and
The Division Bell (enough to fill a CD on its own) - Echoes (and a few
other songs performed live) - La Carrera Panamericana - Peace Be With
You - Pre-show Soundscape track (issued as a 22 minutes extra track on
the Pulse audio cassette) - Professionally filmed Omni shows in Atlanta,
3-5 November 1987 (although, who needs another live performance by the
Floyd?) - The Big Spliff - The Division Bell stereo remix or remaster -
Venice 1989 on CD - Welcome To The Machine on Delicate Sound of Thunder
video.
The Church wishes to thank: Keleven, Rocco Moliterno, RonToon, the many
collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums and Yeeshkul. ♥ Libby ♥
Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 311-321. Povey,
Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008,
p. 260. Steve Hoffman Forum Thread: Pink
Floyd The Later Years Box Set Yeeshkul Forum Thread: Pink
Floyd - The Later Years
On the birthday of the demi-god that is Syd
Barrett for some a hefty package arrived at Atagong mansion. So
heavy that we thought at first it was a tax file from one of the six
Belgian governments.
As you might have guessed it was our copy of The
Later Years that, thanks to an observant member of the Steve
Hoffman Music Forum, we could buy at half the price.
Despite our many criticisms about this box, see The
Later Years: Hot Air & Co, we have to confess it simply oozes a
scent of 'extensive luxury' and our first thought was (and still is)
that it is worth every penny we spent on it. A quick remark about the
cover and inside art that is exquisite Hipgnosian as well and not
the ersatz from The
Endless River.
Floydian Slips
Opening the box, like one of these medieval manuscripts, immediately
confronts you with four booklets. Three are Pink Floyd tour books,
because this is mainly a live set. The fourth contains the lyrics of
AMLOR, TDB and TER, if these abbreviations mean something to you. All
glossy and not on the grey recycled toilet paper that made the Early
Years booklets so unreadable.
The Arnold Layne B-side sounds like something from Einstürzende Neubauten.
When you remove the booklets, there is another thick photo book you can
kill a kitten with. Unfortunately its pages are also made of carton;
using normal paper would’ve certainly doubled its content. But perhaps
that would’ve been overkill as we have already been confronted with
about three hundred pictures of Gilmour and Co.
Don’t think you can get to the music now. Hidden under the book is an
envelope that contains tour artefacts, posters, stickers and other
memorabilia and… two one sided 45RPM singles with etched B-sides.
One contains a rehearsal tape of Lost
For Words, the other Arnold
Layne as performed by the band at the Barbican on the Syd
Barrett tribute concert in 2007, although they were not billed as
Pink Floyd if our memory is correct. (For the completists: it appears
that both singles exist in two versions, with different artwork on its
B-side.)
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
The surprise the ardent fan, your Reverend included, was hoping for is
the updated and remixed version of the Floyd’s comeback album A
Momentary Lapse of Reason. We have compared both versions and what
we think of it will be put hereafter in one of our fantastic Holy Church
of Iggy the Inuit reviews.
Warning: Syd Barrett content – none.
Pink Floyd, finally putting their noses in the same direction.
Signs Of Life
This very ambient and very dreamy piece is enhanced with an almost Keith-Emersonian
keyboard piece of Rick Wright. Magical stuff for those who believe that
Rick was the hidden musical force in the band.
Learning To Fly
For me there is almost no difference, perhaps a little guitar lick at 25
seconds that I don’t remember hearing before. The keyboards are a bit
more to the front during the middle ‘flight’ section, as well as the musique
concrète bits .
Dogs Of War
The Pink Floyd song everybody loves to hate. Basically a simple blues
stomper that has been enhanced with Floydian sound effects. Although
loathed by a majority of fans this song is much closer to the Floyd’s
default (or vintage) sound than – for instance – One Slip or Learning To
Fly.
Some of the Later Years disks.
Overall I can’t hear a big difference between both versions, except that
the vocals, basses and the rolling keyboard have been given extra
emphasis. So one could say it sounds much fatter now than it did
before. A few of the saxophone’s weirder noises have been removed as
well. So is this one better? Absolutely. Even better.
One Slip
The one with the Kraftwerkian intro. Classic Wright keyboards added
throughout and new drums by Nick 'here I am' Mason. As someone remarked
on a music forum, this one gives you ‘goosebumps and shivers down the
spine‘ throughout the track. The drums are much softer now and also some
guitar bits seem to have been added (or mixed from oblivion into the
foreground).
I almost consider it a Floydian classic now.
Some of the Later Years disks.
On The Turning Away
This song brings back some memories for me, frightening me a bit how it
would sound now. A keyboard drone has been added in the beginning and
some scarce keyboard parts throughout the song. As some alumni have
pointed out there are new vocals that may or may not have been taken
from a live performance. At least David Gilmour doesn’t strain his voice
like on the original or at least so it seems.
Many hate this new version, calling it a Frankensteined mess, but I
simply can't. For me this has suddenly turned into a Comfortably Numb
#2, although the neutral observer will call that a very hyperbolic
statement.
Yet Another Movie / Round And Around
The song I prefer the least on Momentary Lapse. It’s a bit boring and
one dimensional, if you ask me.
The 2019 version opens with boing boings that threaten to
euthanise your loudspeakers. This version has more echo than the
original one – listen to Tony Levin’s bass for example that has got a
much deserved upgrade. I have also the impression that little pieces of
additional music have been added here and there and that the guitar is a
bit less in your face. It also seems that Nick Mason has had more than a
helping hand in this new version.
Still not the greatest Pink Floyd song, but what a remarkable
improvement indeed.
One of the many incarnations of Momentary Lapse in The Later Years Box.
A New Machine / Terminal Frost / A New Machine 2
I’m putting this song cycle together as I have always seen this as one
Floydian suite. When it comes to review Pink Floyd I always seem to
belong to another planet than the rest of the world anyway. I like A New
Machine, evidently not as a song on its own, but as an introduction and
coda to Terminal Frost.
And I have always loved Terminal Frost as well. But this re-adapted
version seems a bit weird to me, there is something wrong with the piano
and overall it sounds a bit bland, with far inferior drums than on the
original. Suddenly this has turned into the worst song of the album for
me with a mix that was much better in its original version.
A missed chance.
Sorrow
If one Lapse song merits to be described as a Floydian classic it is
this one. When David Gilmour started to play Sorrow, on the 28th of July
2016 in Tienen (Belgium), his guitar grumbled so deeply it promptly
removed my kidney stones. (See: Coming
Back To Life (David Gilmour, Tienen))
The 2019 version of Sorrow tries to imitate that haunting intro, without
a doubt. But perhaps I’m still in a lousy mood from the subpar Terminal
Frost treatment because it appears to me that also this remix is muddier
than the original (and I seem to be the only person on this globe to
find that). A plus however is the addition of Rick’s keyboard,
especially at the end solo.
Pink Floyd on a road to nowhere.
I deliberately played Lapse 1987 and Lapse 2019 side-to-side without
tinkering, but here is a song I feel the urge for to play with the
sliders. Perhaps it will sound better with some of the basses toned down
a bit.
Second opinion (after having tinkered with my equaliser settings): it
does indeed sound better now, but I can't really vow with my hand on my
heart that this version is much better than the original.
Conclusion
So what is the end result? I’m not really sure. A Momentary Lapse of
Reason has never been into my favourite top 10 and this remix will
probably not change that. For the moment I do seem to prefer this
version to the original and I can only hope it will get a separate
release one day. For those that rely on streaming or download services I
think this is already the case. Those who still believe in CDs, DVDs and
Blu-Rays will have to buy the entire box, I'm afraid.
Now let’s hope Pink Floyd will finally find the time to re-record Atom
Heart Mother one day. However, this seems highly improbable.
Other reviews from what is in this box, may or may not appear in the
future. The Church wishes to thank the many collaborators on Steve
Hoffman Music Forums and Yeeshkul. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
You almost need a degree in Meccano
to open the Pink
FloydLater
Years box. There are many goodies packed inside, although you have
to sell one of your kidneys to be able to buy one. The three post-Waters
studio albums, for example, can be found in 5.1 surround and/or high
resolution stereo mixes. That is what these double DVDs and Blu-Rays are
for. (Logically, the Momentary Lapse surround mixes have only been made
for the remixed and updated 2019 version, not the original 1987 one. You
can read our review of that album at: A
Momentary Relapse.)
The Endless River Film
The
Endless River has been turned into a movie experience by long-time
Floyd collaborator Ian
Emes. Opinions differ about this one, ranging from ‘I just watched
it once out of curiosity’ till ‘The film is really nicely done. You’ll
enjoy it!’.
At first the Holy Church was not that interested in this. The Reverend
orated in a previous article: “I seriously wonder what will be the added
value of that.” (See: The
Later Years: Hot Air & Co.)
Is it merely ‘just a compilation of ethereal drone footage’ filmed in
slow motion or is there more at hand? Because most reviews of The Later
Years seem to forget about this feature, with the exception of Bob
Eichler in his article: Pink
Floyd - The Later Years (1987-2019).
...imagine that Stanley Kubrick was annoyed that too many people had
figured out what 2001 was about, so he set out to make an even more
abstract sequel, inspired by Pink Floyd videos. Outer space images, CGI,
lush landscapes, complex machinery, people moving in slow motion,
interesting architecture shot from weird angles, and a cast of
characters who appear throughout the whole thing. Inspired no doubt by
the album's title, water is a major theme of the video – oceans, rivers,
streams, waterfalls, rapids, fountains, etc... My brain kept trying to
make some sense out of the random-seeming images, but it's probably
better to just let it wash over you.
This exactly describes our feelings after watching the movie, but the
Church wouldn’t be the Church without adding its own comments here and
there. While watching the movie we found – often subliminal – links to
Floydian artwork from the past decades or to other material from the Hipgnosis
art factory.
Rick Wright at the Barbican.
Walk the Layne
But before we get to the feature film of our cinematic evening, let’s
have a look at some of the shorts that can be found on the same disc. We
are talking about the last Pink Floyd performance, not – as generally
believed – the one at Live8, but the Arnold
Layne song at the Syd Barrett Tribute Concert on the 10th of May
2007 at the Barbican. It can be found twice: once as a backstage
rehearsal and once at the concert. The rehearsal doesn’t have Rick, but
a cool as ever Nick Mason who is drumming on a chair, meaning he uses a
chair for a drum. It’s fun to watch ex-Oasis bass player Andy
Bell, who wasn't even born when Arnold Layne was a hit, learning the
tricks of the trade.
Unfortunately Polly yaps a lot in the background, spoiling the fun. But
that’s how she is known in Cambridge Mafia circles anyway.
From a far better quality is the concert take, filmed by Gavin Elder and
using some shots from Simon
Wimpenny and Kees Nijpels. The Floyd plays the song as has always
been intended, without extra frills, short and sweet. Rick has the
honour to do the vocals and it does seem a bit weird that a backup
keyboard player (Jon Carin) was added, but Rick was probably already
sick by then. The interaction between these three old geezers is magical
and their smiles speak volumes.
A great document with an even greater symbolical and sentimental value.
Here I Go
So here we go for our review of the Ian Emes Endless River film, in 95
screenshots and a lot of text. Better scans can be found on our Tumblr
page, using the Ian
Emes tag.
As we have said before, in our Endless River album review from a couple
of years ago, the album is divided in four instrumental suites, ending
with Gilmour’s and Samson’s Floydian eulogy Louder Than Words (see: While
my guitar gently weeps...).
Things Left Unsaid
Things Left Unsaid starts with a very 2001-ish
view from outer space with the sun and earth floating by. Just when you
expect Kubrick’s embryo to appear a human form zooms in. In a corner you
can spot something that could be a nod to the dark alien monolith that
plays such a big role in Kubrick’s masterpiece. Perhaps it is the black
‘Telepatic Wave Receiver and Transmitter’ that adorns The Led
ZeppelinPresence
album, although Storm
Thorgerson used to call that the object. (This cover can be found at
the Hipgnosis Covers website: Presence.)
Stanley
Kubrick and Pink Floyd have a certain past together. Kubrick wanted
to use the Atom
Heart Mother suite for A
Clockwork Orange, but (so the story goes) a stubborn Roger Waters
refused when he discovered that Kubrick wanted to cut up the music to
fit the film scenes. This is an answer Kubrick probably didn’t expect as
the record shop scene in that movie shows the Atom Heart Mother album,
twice.
This wasn’t the end of the Kubrick – Waters saga. Legend has it that
Roger Waters wanted to sample some dialogue from 2001 on his album Amused
To Death. This time it was Kubrick’s turn to refuse, and Waters – in
his default charming way – insulted the movie maker with a cryptic
message on that same album. (The 2015 remix/remaster of Amused To Death
has the HAL 9000 message from 2001 restored and the backwards insult
removed.)
It’s What We Do
With It’s What We Do we return to Earth with scenes of futuristic
skyscrapers and a menacing octahedron metal structure floating in the
air, as an alternative to the Star Trek Borg
cube.
Possible link: The Yes
album Going
For The One has a Hipgnosis sleeve with a man looking at
out-of-this-world-ish skyscrapers and also the Quatermass'
Quatermass
sleeve plays with the same subject. (These covers can be found at the
Hipgnosis Covers website: Going
For The One & Quatermass.)
The following scenes show us bridges, machines and cogwheels, a clear
hint to Welcome
To The Machine. (The track itself is a mild copycat of what we could
hear on the Shine
On You Crazy Diamond instrumental parts.)
Four people, wearing white masks, run in slow motion through a tunnel.
Masks have obviously been used before in the Floyd’s and Hipgnosis
imagery. Just think of the masked children in Another
Brick In The Wall or the cover of the Pink Floyd live album Is
There Anybody Out There? (This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis
Covers website: Is
There Anybody Out There?)
After a succession of psychedelic liquid light style scenes, we cut to
some water splashing and yet another drone shot, flying over a cobbled
beach and the sea. A woman rises out of the water, a hint to the Wish
You Were Here diver artwork probably, and is followed by three other
persons, raising from the water like the zombies from that atrocious
flick Zombie
Lake.
The Pink Floyd Shine
On box also has several (nude) persons rising out of the water. The
same imagery can be found on the Rick Wright solo album Broken
China. (These covers can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Wish
You Were Here, Shine
On, Broken
China.)
We are confronted with an Escher-like
semi-transparent object spinning around in the air.
Ebb And Flow
For an unknown reason, the persons who came out of the sea, run through
some fields. Night falls and we see the starry sky and the aurora
borealis.
Sum
For the bulk of the following song the same four people run around
through fields and forests. There are plenty of nature and water shots.
People are cooling down, playing and resting in the river. Much more
scenes of trees, waterfalls and clouds throughout Skins and Unsung.
Skins
Skins shows the more aggressive side of the river.
Unsung
Unsung gives a more relaxing mood with the sun settling down.
Anisina
The beautiful Anisina starts with boiling lava and a pair of hands
grabbing mud and kneading it into a shapeless form. Close-ups of
colourful nature scenes before the rain falls.
The Lost Art of Conversation
It is raining and The Lost Art of Conversation concentrates on dripping
leaves and a spider taking shelter in its web. We see some tiny fishes
(and a very big one as well). Could this be a nod to the Pulse
album art that shows the evolution from sea to land animals? (This cover
can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Pulse.)
On Noodle Street
On Noodle Street shows us a bridge over a river that runs through a
city. We look up at skyscrapers again.
Night Light
People walk in the street to their work or to a train or airport
terminal. A hint perhaps to the screen movies that accompanied the Dark
Side Of The Moon shows.
Allons-y (1)
Allons-y reverts back to revolving city scenes and water spitting
fountains. The four people walk barefoot in the grass, falling down in a
field of ferns in the middle of a forest.
Autumn ‘68
Autumn ‘68 has the four actors wrestling and lying on a grass field in
the mountains. The spinning multi-cornered object appears again in the
sky, confronting the people who look at it. It then disappears into
space, where it seems to be heading for a far-away nebula.
Allons-y (2)
Allons-y (2) really seems like 2001 revisited with a flight through
space and a human form that appears in the vacuum. This could be
influenced by the hanging man artwork on the Pulse album. (This cover
can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Pulse.)
Pink Floyd has long time been associated with space and space rock (see
our article from 2014: Still
First in Space. NOT!) and most fans are well aware of the fan-made
synchronisation between Echoes
and the 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite' segment from Kubrick’s 2001
movie. If you have never experienced it, and you should, here is one of
the many places were you can watch it: Jupiter
and Beyond the Infinite (Vimeo link).
After the interstellar flight the movie shows the four protagonists,
covered in multicoloured spots, dancing in the vacuum of space, while
scientific and mathematical equations appear on the screen.
On what appears to be a dashboard from an extraterrestrial space ship
some words appear in vaguely recognisable letters. It is as if multiple
letters have been stacked on top of each other. Recognisable are the
words ‘Infinite’ and ‘the dawn\mist’. That last one is a phrase from the
refrain of High Hopes:
The grass was greener The light was brighter The taste was sweeter The
nights of wonder With friends surrounded The dawn mist
glowing The water flowing The endless river
These lyrics read like a synopsis for Ian Emes’ The Endless River movie
and they can be deciphered, with some difficulties, on the alien monitor.
Publius Enigma, as mentioned on The Endless River, a film by Ian Emes.
But the surprises aren’t over yet. At the left hand side of the screen
appear scrambled letters that form the nearly illegible words ‘Publius &
Enigma’.
There we have it. After more than 25 years a new mention of this ongoing
Floydian riddle.
Publius Enimgma 2019.
Publius Enigma
For those who are too young to remember. The Publius
Enigma was an internet brain-teaser, a puzzle evolving around the
1994 Pink Floyd album The
Division Bell.
In the morning of the 11th of June 1994, when the band was playing two
nights at the New York Yankee stadium a cryptic message was send to the
then leading Pink Floyd Usenet newsgroup. It was signed by a poster who
named himself Publius and who used an anonymous e-mail service to
deliver his message.
In this and about two dozen other posts he tried to convince the fans
that The Division Bell music, lyrics and artwork contained an enigma and
that the person who found the solution would be rewarded with a price.
Obviously a lot of fans were highly sceptical about these pretty vague
messages (especially as there were also mails from pranksters going
around). In order to prove his existence Publius promised to give a sign
during a Pink Floyd concert at the Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New
Jersey. During the song Keep
Talking (!) the light display at the front of the stage spelled out
the words ENIGMA PUBLIUS.
Enigma anagram hidden in the lyrics of Wearing The Inside Out.
From then on a large group of fans tried to find a solution to the
enigma. The hints from Publius were deliberately very vague and it was
pretty unclear where to start looking for clues. Basically Publius was
asking for an answer but without giving the question first. There were
rumours of people digging holes in fields around Cambridge, because they
thought a ‘treasure chest’ might have been buried there. Others thought
that the solution might simply be a code word, an anagram buried in the
lyrics, like the word ‘enigma’ that can be found in the third strophe of Wearing
The Inside Out.
Publius kept the Enigma search alive by adding hints that only added to
the confusion. In an unpublished report from a Belgian fan, that the
Church could look into, it was proven that most messages were send in
the early hours after a show or during a day off in the Floyd’s busy
touring schedule. Publius undoubtedly was one of the (many) people
joining the Pink Floyd world tour and someone who could manipulate light
and screen settings during a show.
Pulse
On 20 October 1994 Pink Floyd recorded their London Earl’s Court show
for what later would become the Pulse VHS release. During Another Brick
In The Wall the word ENIGMA was projected on the big round screen behind
the band, giving the Reverend a mild heart attack when he watched the
show a couples of week later on television.
Publius Enigma 1994.
For the VHS release though the word was obfuscated by adding extra lines
and stripes, just as it is has been scrambled now on The Endless River
movie. (On the Pulse DVD release the ENIGMA slide has been removed and
replaced by one reading E=MC2. However, traces of the original can be
found if one browses through the scene frame by frame.)
Over the years the band has reluctantly confessed that the Enigma riddle
was basically a hoax, started by the record company, although the Church
of Iggy the Inuit still suspects that Nick Mason, who has been known for
his pranks and dry wit, may have had a hand in it.
The Publius Enigma died an unsuspected death when the anonymous mail
account suddenly disappeared, making it impossible for fans to post a
solution and claim the price, if there ever was a riddle to start with
and a price to collect.
Over the years ‘new’ Publius Enigma sightings have been discovered, but
these all came from outside or unreliable sources. Until now… although
we sincerely doubt that the crazy hunt for fame and fortune will start
all over again.
But what a long strange trip it has been!
Talkin’ Hawkin’
Talkin’ Hawkin’ continues with the multi-coloured dancing silhouettes,
followed by the clocks of Time.
As a matter of fact, the original 'Time' backdrop movie was made by none
other than Ian Emes (Time
at YouTube).
Some of the people appear packed in linen, like a mummy or a ghost,
others wear their masks again. It reminds us of the Hipgnosis artwork
for the Alan Parsons Project ‘Tales of Mystery And Imagination’ and/or
‘Frances The Mute’ from Mars Volta. (These covers can be found at the
Hipgnosis Covers website: Tales
of Mystery And Imagination & Frances
The Mute.)
The aliens arrive in the city during the night with the street lights on
and the buildings lit. They travel through a tunnel.
Calling / Eyes To Pearls
The aliens transform into liquid ghosts in a nightmarish scene. The city
is dark but has tunnels that are lit. Somehow the aliens are trying to
become human and they roam through abandoned buildings.
Those that have masks take it off. A couple of characters have
difficulties breathing. Their faces are stuck in bubbles, like a liquid
cosmonaut’s helmet, and they fight to survive. (There is a Hipgnosis
cover for the album Deliverance from the French disco band Space.
It has a woman, floating upside down in the desert, with an astronaut’s
helmet on. This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Deliverance,
mildly NSFW.)
But apparently they succeed and overcome the nightmare. They are running
through the landscape, sometimes hand in hand. One of the personae has
the multi-cornered space anomaly tattooed on her arm.
Update December 2020 / January 2021: According to Tomhinde and
Kit Rae at Yeeskul
the official Calling track on YouTube
uses a slightly different mix than the one on the album and in the Later
Years movie :
Around 0:45 there's some added sound effects and an extra synth
(.../...) and at 1:00 there's a slightly extended section.
This was confirmed by Brainysod. Apparently the Youtube
version is about 50 seconds longer than the CD / DVD / BluRay version.
Surfacing
The band is running to the forest were they either find some rest or are
falling down. It makes one wonder if they have succeeded transforming
into humans or if they have failed in their mission. There is ambiguity
in the scenes and they can be interpreted differently.
One of the aliens looks up at the sky, where the singularity has
appeared again. It is not sure if it is there to rescue or to abandon
them.
Louder Than Words
The last song of the movie shows several of the previous scenes again,
but some have been turned upside down or are running backwards.
It could be that the aliens have finally accepted that earth is their
new home. A couple meets at the seaside and sees the object that
disappears again in outer space, leaving them while flashbacks from the
previous songs are repeated.
The movie ends with yet another scene from a bubbling river before
switching over to the earth seen from space again.
There is a glimpse of a black obelisk that transforms into the
multi-shaped interdimensional spaceship.
Conclusion
Although weird and filled with contradicting symbolism The Endless River
movie isn’t half as bad as we feared it would be. Ian Emes has turned it
into an interesting visual spectacle with many enigmatic scenes and a
pretty intriguing, but we fear, non-existing storyline. (Although the
viewer will vainly try to reconstitute a consistent story out of it.) It
could well be that we will get this DVD (or Blu-Ray) out whenever we
want to listen to The Endless River, that is slowly but surely rising in
our ranking from preferred ambient albums, whether you call it a Pink
Floyd album or not.
The Church wishes to thank the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music
Forums, Yeeshkul and the quite fantastic Hipgnosis Covers website. ♥
Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 153. Hipgnosis
Covers at http://www.hipgnosiscovers.com/ Steve
Hoffman Forum Thread: Pink
Floyd The Later Years Box Set Powell, Aubrey: Hipgnosis, Les
Pochettes Mythiques du Célèbre Studio, Gründ, Paris, 2015
(French edition of Hipgnosis Portraits). Thorgerson, Storm & Powell,
Aubrey: For The Love Of Vinyl, Picturebox, Brooklyn, 2008. Thorgerson,
Storm & Curzon, Peter: Mind Over Matter 4, Omnibus Press,
London, 2007. Thorgerson, Storm & Curzon, Peter: Taken By Storm,
Omnibus Press, London, 2007. Thorgerson, Storm: Walk Away René,
Paper Tiger, Limpsfield, 1989. Yeeshkul Forum Thread: Pink
Floyd - The Later Years
This blog entry was suggested (and then promptly forgotten) to us by David
De Vries who traced back the newspaper article on an online archive.
VPRO
Dutch broadcaster VPRO
(Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep / Liberal Protestant Radio
Broadcasting Corporation) was, as the name suggests, a religious radio
at first, but transformed into a progressive TV-station, deliberately
exploring the boundaries of Dutch television. In the late-sixties, so it
seems, there was a ‘coup’ when progressive minds managed to kick the
conservative vicars out of the organisation.
Suddenly flower power television makers shocked the public with Fluxus
happenings and other avant-garde, alternative humour and a pretty weird
taste in music. Legendary was the short-lived Hoepla
show that started in July 1967 and that confronted Dutch teenagers with Hapshash
and the Coloured Coat and gigs from Jimi
Hendrix, Frank
Zappa (ripping one of his albums to pieces) and The
Soft Machine (Soft Machine performing We
Know What You Mean at Hoepla).
Phil Bloom, Hoepla 2, 1967.
Hoepla
Hoepla ignored the current conventions on almost all points. Instead of
making emotionless, polished, risk-free programs using Victorian
standards (…) Hoepla opposed the rules of television craftsmanship.
They
had nifty sets, loud music that was drowning out the interviews, jerky
camera work and shots that sometimes took way too long.
This
apparent amateurism was their method to try to realize an open and
direct way of communication.
Video material that was usually
thrown in the garbage bin ended up on the screen, making it a thousand
times more relevant. (Het
Open Blote Medium (The Open Naked Medium) by Igor Teuwen & Ivo van
Leeuwen, 1986. Quote at approx. 16'15". Freely translated / adapted from
Dutch by FA.)
The second Hoepla show created a row in Dutch parliament because the
progressive VPRO beatniks had dared to display a topless woman, Fluxus
performer Phil
Bloom, for about fifteen seconds. A third show was only broadcast
after the VPRO board of directors censored the naughty bits and that was
the end of it.
Jimi Hendrix, Hoepla, 1967. Picture: Nico van der Stam.
Hoepla was history but its influence was enormous and the seeds of
controversy couldn’t be stopped. VPRO continued with other mind-bending
programs, not always in good taste and not always watchable either. But
if you pretended to be a leftist progressive intellectual in the
seventies, the VPRO Sunday night was obligatory stuff, also for people
in dreary Belgium... especially for people in dreary Belgium where
national TV was still something from the Christian minded fifties.
Musical Treasures
In 1997 music journalist Oscar Smit started to inventory the hundreds of
audio- and video tapes that were lying on attics, in cupboards and dusty
corners of the VPRO headquarters.
He found back the Piknik tapes, live registrations of gigs in the
seventies and other ‘interesting’ stuff.
Some bands weren’t always happy with the recovered material. In the
summer of 1969 Pink Floyd gave a concert at Paradiso
Amsterdam. Unfortunately the electricity failed and the concert was
postponed for a couple of hours. When the band finally started around 1
AM David Gilmour got an electric shock and the gig was again delayed for
about 30 minutes. Because of the electricity problems the PA was
partially disabled, the Floyd had to play without stereo effects, with
less instruments and without microphones. That night they only played
instrumentals and 4 out of 5 were captured by VPRO.
Pink Floyd in Paradiso. Picture: Gijsbert Hanekroot. Taken from 'Pink
Floyd in Nederland'.
Roger Waters made a deal with VPRO that the Paradiso tapes would not be
broadcast, but he had to promise that the band would return for another
taped concert. That one became one of their most famous gigs, recorded
by VPRO, bootlegged multiple times and cherished by fans for decades.
When Oscar Smit found back the Paradiso tape (in 1997) he promptly
received a letter from the Floyd’s men in black with the message that
the recording was still a no-go zone. But in 2016 they were finally
released on The
Early Years, together with the mythical The
Man And The Journey (17 September 1969) from a couple of weeks later.
For a ‘secret’ gig that would take place on 30 July 1970 Kevin Ayers and
The Whole World were announced. Posters and publicity mentioned they
would bring in a more than special guest: Syd Barrett.
This was not the first time Syd Barrett had to play The Netherlands. In
his excellent Floydian biography ‘Pink Floyd In Nederland’ Charles
Beterams writes that Barrett was scheduled to premiere The Madcap
Laughs at De
Melkweg (The Milky Way) in Amsterdam, on the third of January 1970,
the day after the album was officially released. Support Act: Kevin
Ayers. This gig – sorry, we can’t give you more information – was
presumably cancelled at the last moment.
That Kevin Ayers would join Syd Barrett is not that weird. A couple of
weeks earlier Syd had joined Kevin at EMI to guest on Religious
Experience, that would later be re-baptised Singing A Song In The
Morning.
But perhaps the summer of 1970 was a better moment for Syd Barrett ‘to
revitalise his reputation on a truly progressive festival circuit’, to
quote Julian Palacios in Dark
Globe.
Piknik ad, mentioning Syd Barrett. Taken from Random Precision.
In February Barrett had started working on the successor of The Madcap
Laughs (after a ‘live’ session for BBC’s Top Gear) and by the end of
July 1970 the Barrett album was basically ready. A first master
had been assembled by David Gilmour and Peter Bown. (In September a
second and final master was made with remixed versions of Maisie
and Waving
My Arms In The Air.)
June 1970 had seen the first real Syd Barrett concert since January 68
(just before the Floyd ‘forgot’ to pick him up). It was the fairly
shambolic Olympia
show in London, with David
Gilmour and Jerry
Shirley, that only went on for 4 numbers. According to Rob Chapman
in A
Very Irregular Head the band itself was not that bad, but the gig
was destroyed by PA problems that made the singing inaudible. Syd
Barrett brought the show to a halt by leaving at the end of Octopus,
while that number was actually the first where the PA more or less
started to sound OK.
It has to be said that Barrett was fairly nervous for this gig and that
he had to be persuaded by his bandmates to go on stage. In an interview
with Giovanni Dadomo however, Syd sounded pretty eager to go back
on the road:
I’ve got this Wembley gig [Olympia, FA] and then another thing in summer
[Piknik, FA]. I’ll be getting something together for the Wembley thing
and then just see what happens.
Jerry Shirley, however, tells another thing:
He was going to do it, he wasn’t going to do it. Finally we said, Look,
Syd, come on, man, you can do it!
The Syd Barrett gig, with Kevin Ayers & The Whole World show was going
to take place at the Gemeentecentrum (communal centre) of Driebergen,
near Utrecht. But an article, the day before the gig, in Het
Vrije Volk already hinted that Barrett would probably not 'show' up.
Het Vrije Volk SHOW (colorised).
WEDNESDAY 29 JULY 1970 Problems concerning fourth Piknik Will
Syd Barret sing or will he not sing? From our reporter ALE
VAN DIJK
HILVERSUM - VPRO television is uncertain about
the course of the fourth Piknik show, that will be live transmitted from
the province of Utrecht on Nederland 1 on Thursday evening.
Kevin Ayers @ Driebergen. Picture: Ron de Bruijn.
Part One – Beaujolais
The first problem, according to reporter Ale Van Dijk was that the band
had to be bribed with wine:
Director Roelof Kiers has six bottles of Beaujolais from 1969 ready. The
bottles will be on stage on Thursday evening where pop singer Kevin
Ayers (ex-Soft Machine) and the group The Whole World will perform.
Kevin's
manager has ordered three bottles with the message that the boys will
perform better if they see the bottles with the wine they love. They
also always take a sip of it during their performance. And the wine must
be from 1969, according to Kevin and his men, an excellent year.
Part Two – Syd Barrett
A second problem is Syd Barrett, former Pink Floyd singer-composer and
arranger. Syd Barrett is a close friend of Kevin Ayers. That is why the
VPRO also invited him to come to Piknik. But the strangest stories are
circulating about Syd Barrett in the pop world. One of Syd's
peculiarities is that he always refuses to sign a contract that binds
him to perform.
Dance company 'Kunst baart Kracht' @ Hoepla.
Although this is coming from an entertainment gossip page it is pretty
revealing. Syd may have been mad, but not mad enough to be willing to
sign contracts. Ale Van Dijk continues:
He is against it. It sometimes happens that he is present, but if he
does not like the atmosphere or if he thinks he is not in the right
shape, he simply does not enter the stage. It is already certain that
Syd Barrett will only fly to the Netherlands on Thursday if a taxi picks
him up at his house, drives him to the plane and if another taxi is
waiting at Schiphol to take him to the "secret" venue of Piknik in the
province of Utrecht (somewhere on the border with two other provinces).
Fair enough. Apparently the VPRO didn’t mind organising Syd’s trip to
Holland. There must have been quite a few Syd Barrett fans among those
avant-garde television freaks. But the reporter from Het Vrije Volk
isn’t finished yet. Now it’s really time to gossip:
The possibility is also great that the first taxi will not find Barrett
because something has gotten out of hand between Wednesday and Thursday.
Moreover, he may feel "too sick" to go. And the VPRO cannot wave with a
contract. Syd Barrett, however, has been informed about the Dutch Piknik
event and he liked what he heard about it, according to the VPRO.
So far for the Syd Barrett rumours. Did you catch the ironic “too sick”
line? Gossip or not, Ale van Dijk got it right. We will never be certain
if a taxi really waited in front of Syd’s door but if there was one Syd
never made it to The Netherlands.
Kevin Ayers @ Driebergen.
Part Three – The Whole World
The rest of the article has some idle chit chat about The Whole World.
The group The Whole World is a pop group that differs from the usual
electronic bands. A few members of the group have been found on street
corners by Kevin Ayers. They were buskers. There is even a middle-aged
musician in the group who allegedly creates "cheerful superpop".
We are not sure who the journalist meant with ‘buskers’ but the
middle-aged musician must have been sax-player Lol Coxhill who, at 38,
was 12 years older than Kevin Ayers. Mike Oldfield, with 17, was the
youngest in the band..
Zingt Syd Barret (sic) wél of zingt hij niet? (Will Syd Barret sing
or will he not sing?), Het Vrije Volk, 29th of July 1970.
The Concert
The Piknik concert of Kevin Ayers & The Whole World that, according to
one reviewer
is ‘as oddly disconcerting as any live Ayers experience ought to be’ can
be found at YouTube, thanks to the VPRO.
This live broadcast from 1970 catches the Whole Wide World at their most
maddening, a collection of songs that veers deliberately between the
whimsical and the obtuse, with little middle ground in between.
If only they could’ve had Syd Barrett with them. He would not have been
misplaced in that band of loonies.
The Church wishes to thank Charles Beterams, Ron de Bruijn, Gijsbert
Hanekroot, David De Vries, Julian Palacios. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Some pictures have been temporarily removed on this post.
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Beterams, Charles: Pink
Floyd in Nederland, Permafrost Publishers, Rotterdam, 2017, p
102-104, 125. ⚛ Pink Floyd in Paradiso picture: Gijsbert
Hanekroot. Carvalho, Hester: VPRO's
Muzikale Goudschat, NRC.nl, 25/04/1998 (paywalled). Chapman, Rob: A
Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 270. Dadomo,
Giovanni: The Madcap Speaks, Terrapin #9/10, Jul 1974 (interview
dating from 1970). Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd:
Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p. 371, 377. Parker, David: Random
Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p. 157-158, 188-189. ⚛
Syd Barrett Piknik ad: Ron de Bruijn. Teuwen, Igor & van Leeuwen,
Ivo: Het
Open Blote Medium, 1986.
Long time since we have written something about Men
On The Border. Men On The Border are a Swedish band, formed around
Göran Nyström and Phil Etheridge, who surprised us in 2012 with the
album ShinE! (review: Full
of guitars and no dust...).
That debut album contained only Syd Barrett covers, but their second
album Jumpstart, from a year later, mainly had self-penned songs
(review: Jumpstart).
Unfortunately, the CD market more or less collapsed, and plastic wasn’t
profitable any more, especially when you are a young band on the verge
of a breakthrough. The third album from 2015 – Live In Brighton
– was a digital download only (on Amazon
and Spotify)
(review: Live
in Brighton).
MOTB @ Corn Exchange.
2020
We are in 2020 but this doesn't mean that Men On The Border hasn't done
anything for the last lustrum. There was a spectacular gig with the
Sandviken symphony orchestra and a psychedelic light show by Peter
Wynne-Wilson at the Corn Exchange (Cambridge) on the 27th of October
2016, resulting in a smashing single (on Spotify)
with special guest Rachel Barrett. (Youtube audience recording: Long
Gone.)
Other gigs and singles were announced at regular intervals and at the
bottom of this article you can find an overview of sites where you can
find videos and tracks of the band.
June 2020.
We were pleasantly surprised when we heard that Men On The Border jumped
on the vinyl bandwagon and announced a new physical release, Blackbird,
with a sleeve by Ian
Barrett (who also did Jumpstart, BTW).
Looking at the tracklisting we saw that several of the tunes were
already known to us. Göran Nystrom agrees:
They are indeed single songs from many years ago and a few new ones. We
wanted to remix and remaster and give them a proper home on an album.
So something old and something new on some good old-fashioned coloured
vinyl. Let’s hear it from the boys. Here is the Reverend’s verdict.
A flock of blackbirds. Men On The Border 2020. Blackbird
vinyl.
Men On The Border – Blackbird – Side A
To The Promised Land
You can't deny that Men On The Border is Swedish. The opening song of
their new album Blackbird starts Abba-esque
enough to take away all doubt. I’m thinking of The
Piper here, that was on the flip-side of the Super
Trouper single and that, so I have learned, has something of a cult
status among fans. I have always thought it was a hint towards Pink
Floyd, but apparently, that is not the case.
But let’s get back to the Men On The Border and the opening song of
their album.
To The Promised Land is more than that. Men On the Border like to
garnish their songs with elements from the past and this one is no
exception. The song is a dreamlike evocation with a friendly nod, I
think, to Greg
Lake, from early King
Crimson fame and of course Emerson,
Lake & Palmer.
I also hear faint shadows of the folkie minimalism of Mike
Oldfield. Think of Ommadawn,
or perhaps even more appropriate, Hergest
Ridge. This doesn’t mean that Men On The Border are mere copycats.
They take several ingredients out of the encyclopedia of rock, mix them
and perform the result in their typical cool Nordic style.
At two minutes in the song, there is an obvious nod to I
Am The Walrus. It only takes a few seconds but it is enough to make
the hairs on your arms stand up.
Men On The Border plunder the past or... let me rephrase that...
Men On The Border lend from the past and of course, they are not the
first to have done so, just have a go at early Led
Zeppelin for instance. Also, Syd
Barrett from Pink Floyd, as you probably know, was a master sampler,
and even his band’s name was taken from the liner notes of a blues
compilation (read that story at: Step
It Up And Go).
But Men On The Border never turn their samples into a parody, like for
instance Jennifer
Gentle did – intended or not – on Take
My Hand and other songs.
Göran Nyström, whom I think is the main lyricist of the band, also uses
the phrase "Take My Hand" in the To The Promised Land song, although it
is not certain if the Promised Land really is a land of milk and honey
or just another nightmare of an LSD-induced brain.
This song invariably makes me think about the enigma that Syd Barrett
was, but as you know we, Syd Barrett anoraks, have a kind of
short-circuit in our brains that makes us believe that everything in the
world is Syd Barrett related.
So probably I’m just erring, because the follow-up songs from this
record point to another direction.
But what I can say you is this, To The Promised Land is a grower of a
song and an excellent opener of Blackbird.
(Above text was read by the Reverend, in true inspector Jacques
Clouseau style, for the live video show ‘Blackbird
Unboxing’ on Facebook.)
MOTB, Blackbird.
The Populist
The next couple of songs on the A-side are protest songs, which makes
the A-side of Blackbird more or less a political record, but in a polite
Swedish way. Sweden being something like the Canada of Europe, so to
speak. Men On The Border are much more Coldplay
than Sex
Pistols as an early bird-hopper confided to me.
The Populist evidently is about those politicians who rise everywhere in
Europe and the Americas and who use tweeted one-liners to propagate
their political agenda.
It is one of those semi-soft Border ballads these men thrive in. Not a
bad song though, but it could have been spiced a bit more. If there is
one major point of criticism from me to them it is that they never yank
their amplifiers to eleven or spit the venom out.
But once you feel comfortable in the Men On The Border universe it nests
in your brain like an earworm. At two minutes forty-five minutes the men
put their toes in a prog-like puddle that could’ve taken a bit longer.
Why We Build the Wall
Track three of the album is Why We Build the Wall. Indoctrinated as I am
as a Floydian anorak I immediately linked this to The
Wall album, a hint that was probably deliberately built-in by Men On
The Border. The previous song, The Populist, used the phrase ‘dark side’
and these are phrases put in to trigger our musical memory (at least, so
it seems to me).
Why
We Build The Wall is an Anaïs
Mitchell song, taken from her ‘folk opera’ Hadestown
(2010) that was also turned into a theatre play. That album musically
relates to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice. The wall in question is the fortification around
Hadestown, build to keep the so-called enemy out. But the enemy turns
out to be the have-nots who want to find a better life inside the city
walls.
The song Why We Build The Wall acquired a more modern interpretation in
2016 when a presidential candidate promised he was going to build a wall
at the American – Mexican border. In a column for HuffPost
Anaïs Mitchell reacted:
Suddenly it felt like the song was speaking directly about today's
politics, rather than ancient mythology. People began to ask if it was
written in response to the Trump campaign when in reality, both Trump
and the song were simply tapping into the same folk archetypes. There is
nothing new about the Wall. Political leaders have invoked it time and
again to their advantage because it works so well on people who feel
scared.
The songwriter ended her article with the following plea: “Let’s not
elect him President.”
But we all know how this has ended.
The Men On The Border version is pretty close to the original (or one of
the originals, as there are different versions of the song), although
they venture more or less in prog-land thanks to the guitar intro and
intermezzi.
In this cover, they show themselves from a slightly more aggressive way
and that’s the way I like it. Great tune.
Blackbird (inside cover picture).
She Took A Long Cool Look
In Douglas
Adams' excellent sci-fi series The
Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears a rock band called
Disaster Area. They are the loudest band in the universe and have been
inspired by the theatrical shows of Pink Floyd. This has got absolutely
nothing to do with the Men On The Border’s cover version of She Took A
Long Cool Look.
It starts slow, very slow, in a Poles
Apart fairground kind of way. A cool idea, at least for the first 30
seconds. It made me wonder how the song would be evolving, later on,
knowing the Men’s obsession for turning Barrett classics into something
new. Reggae? Punk? Symphonic Metal?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t evolve at all and it goes on forever and ever,
like a record with a stuck needle. Even the flimsy musique concrète
bit in the middle can’t salvage this, although that would have been the
right place for a tempo change.
I wrote in the introduction that this album assembles several songs MOTB
have recorded for the past four or five years, including quite a lot of
Syd Barrett covers. Why they chose this one is a mystery to me.
Disaster area indeed and a failed experiment.
Blackbird Song
A heartbeat rhythm – there’s Pink Floyd again! - starts Blackbird Song,
the title track. It is followed by an early U2
guitar, before adventuring into an Owner
Of A Lonely Heart riff.
It’s a happy little tune about someone whose mind drifts off when he
can’t sleep at night and a great closing track of Side A.
MOTB 2020 Summer Of Love concert announcement. Link: Summer
Of Love.
Men On The Border – Blackbird – Side B
Side B of Blackbird contains a few Syd Barrett classics that have been
transmuted by Phil and Göran. I am a great admirer of people who destroy
and rebuild a cover. I have hinted a few paragraphs before this can
either turn into something exciting or into a failed experiment.
The second side of Blackbird shows us how the Border’s cut and paste
technique can turn into something pretty stimulating.
Blackbird - personnel.
Scream Thy Last Scream
Scream Thy Last Scream, for instance. It’s an older one as I seem to
have an early version of this song dating from somewhere in 2014. It was
quite spectacular then and it still is.
Not a Syd Barrett original, obviously. Call it a bit avant-garde-jazzy
or art-of-noisy before it evolves in another one of those default Border
semi-soft rock songs with an airy funky beat. Despite the F-bomb it
never gets angry and the refrain is another one of saccharine quality. A
great little song with some cool keyboard and guitar and overall an
attractive arrangement.
Milky Way / I Never Lied To You
A threatening bass glides into a cute guitar solo that never crosses the
border of prog but comes pretty close. With its first strophe Milky Way
almost turns into a lost crooner classic. The refrain, if there is
something like a refrain in this song, is a bit rougher to the ears.
Three minutes and 30 seconds in the song there seems to be a Metallic
Spheres (Paterson,
Youth & Gilmour) inspired ambient mid-piece that progressively slides
into I Never Lied To You that gets a soft funky new romantics treatment.
Not really extraordinary but nice.
Blackbird art by Ian Barrett.
Dominoes
Dominoes Mark 2, the dance version, as Göran more or less describes it.
A quasi-funky neo-psychedelic version of an almost perfect song,
screaming for a 15-minutes full-fledged house remix.
This Border version is a bit under-cooled and if there is one global
criticism of me about Men On The Border in general, it is that they
never dare colouring outside the lines. Too much Alan
Parsons and not enough Prince.
Which is weird, because they tend to cover the guy who used a Zippo
lighter to massacre his guitar strings. At the other hand Men On The
Border are not afraid to go on tour with a symphonic orchestra, like
good old Deep Purple, and as such, they have more or less become the
Cambridge Mafia house band.
Dominoes is good, very good even, ending Blackbird on a high note.
Epilogue
When Men On The Border enter the gate into Barrett-land, they tend to
milk from that Aquarian fifth dimension. Once you have grown accustomed
to that somewhat lazy Nordic style of theirs, there is a pretty great
album hidden inside that Ian Barrett sleeve. They do know how to write
an earworm of a song and as we all know... the early (black)bird...
See Emily Play
Not on this album, but available as a (download)
single is MOTB's brand new version of See Emily Play. Enjoy!
Rieks Korte is a Syd Barrett fan and a lover of rarities as his
Dutch blogs De
Platenkoffer and De
Platenkoldershow show. Unfortunately these blogs haven’t been
updated since 2016 as he also succumbed to the Venus
flytrap that is Facebook.
As such he is a valid contributor to Birdie
Hop, that eclectic mixture of Sydiots (good!) and idiots (not so
good!) who think that publishing the same pictures from Syd Barrett over
and over again is a splendid thing. But who am I to blame others, next
to slightly fantastic The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit (the blog
you are reading now), there is a pretty redundant Tumblr,
a superfluous Facebook
page and a forgettable Twitter
with the same name, that only add to the general obfuscation of the
interweb.
So far for my introduction that, as the gentle reader knows, mostly has
nothing to do with the rest of the article. This is no exception.
Lucifer Sam
A couple of days ago Rieks Korte wrote
about a Lucifer Sam cover from the band The Graded Grains,
allegedly from 1967, that he described as (possibly) the first Pink
Floyd cover ever. You can listen to it hereafter, before we continue
with our lament. Thank you.
There is a very detailed – official – website
of the band and from there we learn that they were originally based at
Exeter and started in 1964 as The Spartans. They morphed into Clockwork
Orange and finally they settled as The Graded Grains in 1967.
The band went on until 1971, had a bus-load of personnel changes, and
had over 300 gigs in Germany alone. They acted as a warm-up band for
quite a few rock legends: Amen Corner, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown,
Cream, Family, Free, Long John Baldry, The Move, The Pretty Things, The
Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Traffic and The Who.
A Graded Grains Mk2 was reformed in 1974. That band went on for about a
decade with over a thousand gigs on their list.
Despite these many gigs there are only about 30 recorded tracks of them,
available in collectors circles and never officially released, with the
odd exception here and there.
The Graded Grains Mk1. LTR: Cliff Andrews, John Gregory & Bud Street.
Picture: http://www.gradedgrains.co.uk.
Lucifer
Sam, Graded Grains, 1968.
Lucifer Sam
The first Graded Grains tracks were made at Swan Street Studio, Torquay,
in 1968, engineered by Tony Waldron. It had Cliff Andrews on drums, John
Gregory on guitar and Ian “Bud” Street on bass and vocals.
This session has survived on acetate. Side A has an early version of
Animal Magic (misspelled as Animal Majic), side B has a track that has
been noted down as Lucifer Son but that is a (pretty average)
cover of the Floyd’s Lucifer
Sam, probably to repeat the animal theme on the record's B-side.
Dating
While Modbeat66 at YouTube claims this is a 1967 track the Graded
Grains site confirms several times that this session dates from 1968.
That is the date we will work with.
So, is this really the first Pink Floyd cover as has been claimed? No,
it probably isn’t.
As usual, when things involve Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd, the
Reverend thinks he can give the answers.
Chocolate Soup for Diabetics.
Explanation 1
First of all, the Lucifer Sam version of The Graded Grains exists only
as an acetate
disc and was never issued as a single. A collector found it in a
London shop and put the track on a 1983 Chocolate
Soup For Diabetics compilation (still as Lucifer Son, by the way).
One source told the Church that the song could be found on an earlier
bootleg, where it was described as a track from an unknown band, but we
didn't find a trace of that album.
Dr Doom, on 45Cat,
claims that there are two known acetates of this record. One was
auctioned in 2004 on eBay and on the third of September 2017 a second
one was sold for £821 on Popsike
(where it was confirmed this was the second known copy of that acetate).
Although recorded in 1968, Lucifer Sam by The Graded Grains has only
been officially released in the mid eighties, so it simply isn't the
Floyd’s first cover version. Some readers might find that we are
stretching the rules a bit...
...but we have an even better argument.
See Emily Play, Three To One, 1967.
Explanation 2
There is a Pink Floyd cover from a Canadian band that dates from 1967, a
couple of months before Graded Grains recorded Lucifer Sam. Three To
One recorded See
Emily Play on the Arc label in 1967 and a year later that same track
appeared on the CTV
After Four compilation.
A second See
Emily Play cover on Arc, using new vocals, but with the same musical
track, was released by the Okey
Pokey Band & Singers on their 1968 Flower
Power album. A shorter version of exactly the same song was put on
an 1968 EP from the band The
Golden Ring, unfortunately that version seems to have disappeared
from YouTube.
The Okey Pokey Band and The Golden Ring never existed as such, but were
just fake band names to put on so-called sound-alike records. We have
dedicated a very detailed article about these Canadian Pink Floyd
covers: The
Rape of Emily (three different ones).
Conclusion
Graded Grains were one of the very first bands to cover a Pink Floyd
tune, only nobody ever heard it before the eighties. They were preceded
by a couple of months by Canadian band Three To One who covered See
Emily Play. Perhaps Graded Grains were the first British band to
have covered a Pink Floyd song, although that is open for discussion.
It makes a good story though.
Many thanks: British
Music Archive, Dr Doom, Graded
Grains, John Gregory, Rieks Korte, Modbeat66 and the friendly people
of Birdie Hop. Some pictures and stuff at our Tumblr: Graded
Grains. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Somewhere in the latter days of the previous century, a journalist wrote
that the return of Kraftwerk was more relevant than the return of Pink
Floyd. Even as a lifelong Floyd-anorak I had to agree with that
opinion, but I need to confess that their quirky Autobahn
has been in my personal top-10 for decades. It is as essential as, for
instance, Echoes.
Nobody would have predicted that two out of the three remaining Pink
Floyd members would play an important role in the musical fish-pond of
today. And yet…
Roger Waters US + THEM.
Roger Waters
Roger Waters has issued a live US + THEM that is loosely built around
his latest (and excellent) studio album Is
This The Life We Really Want? (Read our review at: Louder
than Words.) If you take a closer look at the tracklisting you see
that only three numbers of that album have been incorporated and that
the rest (18 tracks) are basically a Pink Floyd greatest hits package.
Nothing wrong with that. You need to give the people what they want, the
Reverend included.
I know Waters has left his former band for 35 years now, but I can't get
used to singers who replace the David Gilmour parts. They may look as
uncombed as Gilmour in the seventies, but they still sound as a
surrogate band. It also feels to me that saxophone player Ian
Ritchie was having something of an off day on this release. The girl
choir, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig from Lucius
sing heavenly but seem to have taken their outfits from a Star Trek TOS
garage sale.
All in all, they’re a weird lot, but an excellent and tight band. Roger
Waters walks around a lot, spastically attacking his bass guitar and
happily mumbling to himself, like grandpa on a family reunion.
I find this release very moving at places, especially with the classic
pieces that are more directed towards Waters, than on a David Gilmour
solo concert. I love the fact that ‘Brick’ was given a long treatment
with the intro piece ‘The
Happiest Days Of Our Lives’ and that it was extended with part three
of the song, instead of the pretty superfluous ‘Ballad of Jean Charles
de Menezes’ that can be heard on his (abominable) Wall album.
Roger Waters.
It also needs to be said that Roger Waters is getting old and somehow
one can hear that. The boys are not getting any younger and David
Gilmour’s voice, as well, has suffered as could be witnessed on some of
his Von Trapped Family video streams.
As an old and grumpy man myself I love the shots of young people
enjoying and singing to the music, often with tears in their eyes. Makes
me think of me, some 30-40 years ago…
Tears in my eyes are still my subjective parameter to measure the
quality of a Pink Floyd related product. Wish
You Were Here does it every time, so logically on US + THEM as well.
On the scale of used Kleenex tissues, this is a very good product, even
if Shine On You Crazy Diamond is missing.
Who says "Roger Waters" can't ignore the political messages he likes to
throw around, sometimes even interfering with the music as in Money that
is split into two parts by (images of) an atomic explosion. But in other
places, it is as if the editors didn't dare to show the political
messages too much… afraid that it might hurt the selling figures. Money,
it’s still a gas.
Despite some flaws, US + THEM is as good as it gets. Roger Waters has
taken back the leadership of what was once laughingly named Pink Floyd.
Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets
Nick Mason
Live At The Roundhouse could be a live document of an entirely different
band. There is only one point of convergence between Roundhouse and US +
THEM and that is the presence of One
Of These Days. For the rest, both products are completely
contrasting.
Live At The Roundhouse from Saucerful of Secrets is very close to
fantastic although it doesn’t pretend to sound like Pink Floyd at all.
Nick Mason has always been the coolest member and he is the only one who
has been present in all Floydian incarnations from the past fifty-five
years. He was already a member when the band went under the name Abdabs
or another of those silly names they had at their beginning.
While Gilmour and Waters try to be a carbon copy of their previous
grandeur Mason seems to have said 'fuck it'. He assembled a gang of
cool-sounding dudes, playing pub rock style covers of a band Mason once
used to drum for. In a way it's blasphemous and that is what it makes so
attractive.
These guys seem to have fun when they play a song, especially Guy
Pratt, but he has always been some kind of a nutjob. He should
assemble his many rock'n'roll anecdotes in a book and call it My
Bass And Other Animals or something like that if he ever finds the
time.
Nick Mason.
While the kids are having fun, grandpa Mason sits behind his drums
friendly smiling and overlooking the brats on stage. It’s, in a way,
very satisfying to watch. I feared a few times that Nick might fall
asleep, but it was a false alert.
Two of the musicians have a link with The
Orb hemisphere. Guy Pratt and keyboard player Dom
Beken have been in the Transit
Kings with Orb guru Alex
Paterson and this clearly shows on Obscured
By Clouds that gets an almost ambient house rendition.
The biggest surprise is the return, not of the son of nothing, but Atom
Heart Mother, in a condensed but oh so admirable way. Pass me the
Kleenex box, please.
The concert that I witnessed a long time ago in Antwerp, if I remember
it well, ended with One Of These Days. I used that occasion to have a
leak as I have always found it one of the Floyd’s lesser tracks.
For me, it didn't need to be on Roundhouse, nor US + THEM.
Saucerful Of Secrets.
Time for the encores.
Does it need to be said that the Celestial Voices part of A
Saucerful of Secrets is about the most beautiful piece of rock music
ever? It beats Comfy
Numb with at least half a block.
To end the gig Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets even manages to
transform one of the worst songs of Pink Floyd into the next big 1968
thing, as memorable as The MonkeesPorpoise
Song. Point
Me At The Sky is an unforgettable way to say goodbye.
Buy US +THEM for the jukebox hits, buy Live At The Roundhouse for the
fun.
Oh, by the way, which one…?
Saucerful of Secrets is Dom Beken, Lee Harris, Gary Kemp, Nick Mason &
Guy Pratt.
If you're planning to get a copy of High
Hopes for Christmas, tough luck! This biography, limited to 500
copies, about the origins of the voice and guitar of Pink
Floyd was sold out in a couple of weeks. If there will be no
paperback (never say never) the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit may be one
of the scarce places where you can read about it.
We must disappoint those fans who are thinking that this is (yet,
another) Syd
Barrett biography. High Hopes is all about David
Gilmour's Cambridge roots and one needs a magnifying glass to find
anything about Syd, or Roger
Waters, for that matter.
The reason is simple. David Gilmour took his musical road which was
different than the routes followed by Syd Barrett and/or Roger Waters.
It was only in December 1967 – January 1968 that their lines converged,
making Pink Floyd a seventies prog-rock monster that has now become a
world leader in rock recycling.
Echoes & 1960s Cambridge.
Glenn Povey
High Hopes has been written by two authors. Glenn Povey is
probably well known as he has published several overlapping Floydian
vade-mecums, including the quirky Pink Floyd in Objects. His Echoes
chronology still is our main reference book when it comes to data
confirmation.
Warren Dosanjh
Warren Dosanjh is less known, except when you are a Barrett
anorak, a follower of the Holy Church, or an adept member of the Birdie
Hop Facebook gang.
Somewhere hidden on this exceptional erudite blog is a 2011 interview
with the man who claims to have been Syd Barrett's first manager, as
noted down by Antonio Jesús from the slightly fantastic Spanish Syd
Barrett blog Solo
en las Nubes. You can read it at: Warren
Dosanjh, Syd Barrett's first manager.
Dosanjh is also behind the I-spy-Syd-in-Cambridge
website and the (free, downloadable) history book The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge. It is recommended reading for people
interested in the roots of Pink Floyd but is much more than that as it
lists some of the competing sixties bands in Cambridge. And when you say
bands in Cambridge in the sixties Syd Barrett invariably shows up and so
does his buddy David Gilmour. (Roger Waters was more into booze and
scooters than in music, apparently.)
Guitarist For Hire
Pink Floyd biographer Hugh
Fielder, author of Behind The Wall, once confessed he was the
singer in a Cantabrigian band called The Ramblin' Blues. One day,
in 1965, they had a local gig planned but their guitarist couldn't make
it. So they asked David Gilmour to step in and he blended in perfectly.
There was only one small problem, Gilmour asked for the band's complete
fee, so the other musicians had to play for free. Don't ask for a slice
of my pie, he must have thought.
This anecdote, that isn't in High Hopes BTW, is representative for
Gilmour's attitude towards his musical career, culminating in overpriced
Pink Floyd boxes that invariably show up when Christmas is getting
close. This doesn't take away that he is an exceptionally gifted
musician though and it already showed in the sixties.
Libby Gausden, for instance, has testified several times that she and
her friends liked Gilmour's band Jokers Wild much more than the
somewhat bizarre Pink Floyd.
High Hopes mixes Povey's encyclopedic Pink Floyd knowledge and Dosanjh's
oral history notes and anecdotes from the Cambridge beatnik days. As
such the book has quite some overlap with the 1960s Cambridge booklet
and with those biographies that describe the Floyd's (and Barrett's)
early days. If you are a close follower of the Facebook Barrett group
Birdie Hop you may have seen the same people passing by: Viv Brans, Mick
Brown, Libby Gausden, David Parker, Stephen Pyle… They like to talk
about the sixties.
But what it does brilliantly is setting the record straight regarding
the bands David Gilmour played in: The Newcomers (1963), The Ramblers
(one gig, 1963), Jokers Wild (1964), Jokers Wild #2 (1966), Bullit
(1966, same band), Flowers (1966, same band), Pink Floyd (1968).
Although there still is some uncertainty about how and when Bullitt and
Flowers came into place.
Pictures
The real treat of this biography are the many pictures of Gilmour as a
young man, coming from the family archives, that are slowly seeping
through to the web: Gilmour as a toddler, Gilmour as a boy scout,
Gilmour as a one-time photo model…
For aspirant record collectors there are pictures of the Jokers
Wild EP (50 copies, taken from the Charles
Beterams archives) and the Why
Do Fools Fall In Love single (also 50 copies). Viv Brans' has got
one of those, autographed by the band members, and it must be worth a
small fortune.
When the authors could get hold of the archives of friends and family
this biography is very detailed. There is a list of The Newcomers gigs
with David Gilmour in the band. Same thing for the Jokers Wild gigs
between February 1964 and May 1966, with ads for (some of) these shows
and – in a few cases – even a set-list. En passant it is revealed that
Peter Gilmour has some live recordings of the band, making fans drool
all over the world.
David Gilmour did not help in the making of this biography. It shows in
those parts where he is the only one who can illustrate certain facts.
The chapter that deals with the recording of the A
Coeur Joie soundtrack gets no further than what we already know.
Early in the book the 2015 BBC movie Wider
Horizons is mentioned. Calling it a documentary is perhaps a bit too
much honour as it was mainly a David Gilmour promotion film to accompany
his Rattle That Lock album.
There is one highly personal moment though when the interviewer asks if
Gilmour misses his mother. The answer is atypical, even for David: "Do I
miss my mother? Mmm… no.", although - a few seconds before in the
interview - he reveals that his mother's descend into dementia had
triggered some emotions that came out in the form of a song (Wider
Horizons).
Pink Orphans
Most Pink Floyd biographies compare the Roger Waters and Syd Barrett
family relations as identical, as both musicians had lost their fathers.
Roger Waters tried to ventilate his emotions by adding his father's
story in The Wall and The Final Cut.
About Syd Barrett it has been suggested that his father's death may have
triggered his downfall into drug abuse, ultimately frying his brains and
becoming something of a slightly handicapped quixotic eccentric.
David Gilmour is mostly forgotten in this summary. The fact that his
parents left their children, not once, not twice but three times in a
row must have hurt him deeply. We know that Gilmour is a very stubborn
man and that he will not easily change his point of view.
Jokers Wild #3
David Gilmour always liked to have his old Cambridge friends around (at
least until Polly arrived, badmouths claim). For his first, eponymous
solo album he invited his Jokers Wild #2 colleagues Ricky
Wills and Willie
Wilson. During one of the sessions at Gilmour's home studio, they
were joined by David Parker (The Redcaps) and Clive Welham (Jokers Wild
#1) and recorded the classic Peanuts,
a 1957 hit by Little
Joe & The Thrillers (and also covered by The
Four Seasons).
When Clive Welham passed away in 2012 the song was published on YouTube
and the fact that David Gilmour was playing on it was given away in the
2012 edition of The music scene of 1960s Cambridge, compiled by Warren
Dosanjh. Nobody noticed and at the moment we write this review it has
only been played about 1800 times in 8 years. (For comparison: Yes,
We Have Ghosts has over two million hits.)
Perhaps someone should tell these all-knowing David Gilmour fans that
their guitar hero is on this track. The biography High Hopes tries at
least, but you need to have one of the 500 copies to know that.
Nice little biography, about a great musician who has been part of the
greatest band in the world.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Dosanjh, Warren &
Povey, Glenn: High Hopes, David Gilmour, Mind Head Publishing,
2020. Dosanjh, Warren: The music scene of 1960s Cambridge,
Cambridge, 2015. Fielder, Hugh: Behind The Wall, Librero,
Kerkdriel, 2014. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of
Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008.
The Lyrics of Syd Barrett. Edited by Rob Chapman & David Gilmour..
Rumours
Somewhere in October 2019, I heard rumours about a Syd Barrett lyrics
book that was in the pipeline. In April 2020 there was – finally – some
official news about the book when Rob
Chapman tweeted about it:
...the Syd Barrett lyric book has been put back to next year due to the
Virus. A pity because there’s going to be an exclusive in there which
will make all Syd fans gasp and spontaneously combust when they read it…
Two weeks later, during one of his ‘Theatre
For Dreamers’ live streams, David
Gilmour confirmed that he was proofreading Syd’s lyrics by comparing
Chapman’s notes with the isolated voice tracks from the Syd Barrett
masters.
The complete lyrics of Syd Barrett – 52 songs written for Pink Floyd and
during his subsequent solo career – are presented together for the first
time, along with rare photos and artwork, to form this beautifully
illustrated book.
February 2021 the book has finally arrived in the hands of the fans,
although Amazon France keeps on insisting that it doesn’t exist, yet.
Let's talk about the 'rare' photos and artwork first. To be honest,
there aren’t any. I’m browsing through the Kindle version and all
pictures, except perhaps one, are those that are daily published on a
multitude of Syd Barrett Facebook groups and Tumblrs, including my own
ridiculous iggyinuit.tumblr.com.
But obviously, this book isn’t about the pictures although these
could’ve been a bit less predictable, to say the least.
Peter Jenner
There is a foreword by Peter Jenner who compares Syd’s songs with Van
Gogh’s paintings. He’s done that before, for instance on the Birdie Hop
/ The Church interview
he did in 2014 (see: An
innerview with Peter Jenner). Syd left an everlasting impression on
the people he met and worked with, that’s for sure.
Van Gogh - Wheat Field with Syd (1890). Mashup: Felix Atagong.
Rob Chapman
Before the lyrics section starts there is a quite brainy and erudite
introduction by Rob Chapman. Evidently, it centralises on Syd's
wordsmanship that often meanders in obscure waters. Some lyrics need a
guide book that only existed in Syd’s mind, others are just plain
gibberish and failed experiments, a bit like the early Floyd jams that
sometimes were cool and often were not. But when Syd is brilliant, well…
he’s just damn brilliant.
Chapman's essay regales its readers, read it slowly to let it sink in.
Scream
As soon as the first copies were distributed Syd fanatics had their
remarks. Fans are used to their interpretations of Syd's lyrics and some
of the Gilmour / Chapman adaptions were not that easily accepted. Here
are a few examples:
Waddle with apples to grouchy Mrs Stores vs. Waddle with apples to
crunchy Mrs Stores.
Gregory Taylor on the Birdie
Hop Facebook group about this Scream Thy Last Scream verse:
I am not sure that the word 'grouchy' was particularly in usage during
the 1960s whereas 'crunchy' was very current particularly in telly
adverts. Syd liked onomatopoeic words so that sounds more feasible to
me. He also didn’t use obvious Americanisms like ‘grouchy’.
Matthew Cheney:
My point was that given the potential for multiple interpretations
still, the book will inevitably have some kind of slant depending on who
is involved.
WTF is "limpet green"? Limpid green refers to the icy waters mentioned
in the same verse. Limpid is a water reference. A limpet is a mollusk
(and they aren't green).
Actually, Rontoon, green limpets do exist, the internet is full of them.
However, it would be so nice if Rob Chapman could explain to the
hardcore Sydocracy why he (and Mr Gilmour) put in the 'grouchy'
and 'limpet' words instead of ‘crunchy’ and ‘limpid’.
Annotations would have been very helpful but unfortunately, Rob prefers
to kick around on Twitter,
making derogatory remarks about anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
Controversy
At Late
Night, still relevant after all these years, Syd Wonder assembled
lyrics that could contain errors in Chapman's transcription. According
to Syd Wonder Rob Chapman did a particularly bad job on Double O Bo and
made mistakes in Late Night, Milky Way, Rats, Wined and Dined, If It's
In You and Vegetable Man. Read his analysis at: The
lyrics of Syd Barrett...
Official Secrets Act
Some fans regret the fact that this book was assembled in secrecy and
that Roger Waters, nor Nick Mason have been involved. Were they asked,
we will never know, but it doesn't look that way. Syd Barrett is a
division of the Gilmour-led Floyd company and shares the same management.
Chapman, who once described Pink Floyd as a firm of chartered surveyors,
finds this utterly silly as well:
I’ve got to sit on hot information for nearly a year now. I’ll probably
have to sign the Official Secrets Act. 48 hour ago I was the first
person in the world outside of ‘certain famous parties’ to read it.
Tease?
Missing Songs
Now for the songs. These are the lyrics for the Syd Barrett tracks that
have been officially released. Why do I say that? Because ‘Living
Alone’ is missing and perhaps a few others.
‘Living Alone’ is vegetating on tape E95744Z that is in David Gilmour’s
Fort Knoxian archives, along with Bob
Dylan Blues. Bob Dylan Blues has been released on a compilation
album, but Living Alone not. Is Living Alone a song with lyrics? Is it
worth releasing? Who knows? Who cares?
Another missing song is ‘Remember Me’ from the 1965 demos.
‘Lucy Leave’, ‘Double O Bo’ and ‘Butterfly’ are in the book. ‘Remember
Me’ not. This could mean it was written by someone else or perhaps it is
just one of those traditional Floydian fuck-ups. As usual, there is
silence in the Chapman / Pink Floyd camp.
Rooftop in Terrapin 9.
A Rooftop Song In A Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point.
Then there is the case of ‘Rooftop’. The July 1974 issue of the fanzine
Terrapin has an unpublished Syd Barrett poem, copied by Bernard White
after a visit at the Hipgnosis
headquarters.
It has survived in two versions, both in Bernard White’s handwriting.
There is the published
version in the fanzine, where he explicitly thanks ‘Hypgnosis’ (sic)
for the poem. A second
version was sold by Bonhams in December 2010 for the crazy price of
2160£.
The seller claimed that the poem was in Barrett’s handwriting. The Late
Night forum and the Church debunked this and tried to warn potential
buyers. Bonhams was warned as well but they ignored it. A decade ago I
was advised not to dig too deep into the matter, as the seller had a
high position in the Syd Barrett pecking order. Weird scenes inside the
Syd Barrett goldmine, so it seems. See: Bonhams
Sells Fake Barrett Poem.
In the uncut and unedited Darker Globe manuscript from Julian
Palacios, one can find the following.
At El Patio, they read 19th Century French symbolist poet Charles
Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. In Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, the
17-year old hellion poet insisted, ‘It is necessary to be absolutely
modern’. Syd was taken with Baudelaire’s 1869 Paris Spleen, and
fragments found way into his poem ‘Rooftop in a Thunderstorm Row Missing
the Point’. Syd scribbled, ‘the prophecy, to recreate the truth / in
visions of a seasonal mood...’
Unfortunately, I can't find the Paris
Spleen fragments that inspired Barrett, but The Old Clown
poem does have a clowns and jugglers line.
It was one of those gala days that all the clowns, jugglers, animal
trainers, and ambulant hucksters count on, long in advance, to make up
for the lean seasons of the year.
In a tweet from February 2021, Rob Chapman calls Rooftop a total fake.
Oh gawd!
Yes its that totally unconvincing Thunderbird (sic) Row missing the
point forgery that Bernard White was passing around in the 80s. He casts
a long vapour trail does Mr White.
Wolfpack, over at Late
Night, has his objections about Chapman’s comment:
There were no Xerox machines just easily available in the early 1970s.
So, if White found a sheet of Barrett lyrics in some Hipgnosis archive,
he just couldn't run to some supermarket to copy the sheet.
All
he could do was writing down in his own handwriting, what he was reading
in front of him.
First of all, the Rooftop poem doesn't date from the eighties but was
published in Terrapin in 1974. In his foreword Bernard White thanks
‘Hypgnosis for the poem and photos’. This is repeated in the ‘credits’
section: ‘This issue all photos plus poem: Hypgnosis’. Bernard White
doesn’t seem the person to me to fabricate a false Syd Barrett poem. The
Hipgnosis archive, where he claimed to have found the poem, has been
lost. We can’t prove its authenticity. Chapman can’t prove the opposite
either.
Mind Shot (It Is Obvious).
Mind Shot
The 2001 Syd Barrett compilation album Wouldn’t
You Miss Me? has a partial facsimile of the Mind Shot lyrics,
better known as It Is Obvious. It is believed that it comes
straight out of Syd’s binder that contained his lyrics.
Wolfpack has asked, and rightly so, why this sheet hasn’t been included.
Most of Syd’s typewritten lyrics have been lost, so why didn’t they add
the one(s) that did survive?
On top of that, Chapman changes Syd’s line ‘Oh mumma listen dolly’ into
‘Mumble listen dolly’. Once again some explanation would have been
appreciated.
I kid you not. Madcap
announced as Mad Cat.
Octopus
There are plenty of cases where different interpretations of the lyrics
are possible. But it’s nice to see that there finally is a consensus
about Opal (instead of Opel) and that both mad cats and madcaps
are hiding in Octopus / Clowns & Jugglers.
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that Gilmour and Chapman didn't listen
to isolated voice tracks for all tracks, despite all the brouhaha, only
for those they had a problem with. There is a line in Octopus that
officially goes: "The seas will reach and always seep."
That's wrong, states Chapman on Twitter, nearly a year ago, suggesting:
“The seas will wreath. We’ll always see.”
So why did it change back to the first – clearly wrong – line in the
book?
Walk with me
Chris Flackett on Twitter:
I do have one question, respectfully asked, as it goes: I always thought
the line in Candy and a Currant Bun was 'please just fuck with
me'. Was it just a common mishearing then? Always wondered how they
slipped that past EMI.
Rob Chapman replies:
Didn't have any multi-track to prove that but I think it's both, like
madcap and madcat on Octopus.
Wrong, multi-tracks of Candy do exist and have even been (partially)
published on YouTube.
Rob Chapman plays it safe and uses the politically correct line:
"Please, just walk with me."
This is weird because in 'Irregular Head' Chapman acknowledges the
existence of the four-letter word: “He slips a cleverly disguised ‘fock’
into the chorus and makes it sound like ‘walk’.”
No Man’s Land
The promised part where fans would ‘spontaneously combust’ is the spoken
word ending of No Man's Land. It must have been a titanic work to
isolate the mumbling sentences of the crazy bard, spoken at a staggering
speed.
It’s a work of love and dedication and Sydiots all over the planet will
thank the Chapman / Gilmour team for that.
Conclusion
Is this the definitive statement on Syd’s lyrics as Chapman proudly
tells in an interview with the Bureau
of Lost Culture? I don’t think it is. There are still some loose
ends and as some anoraks have said, it wouldn't have hurt to add some
annotations. It’s not that Chapman / Gilmour didn’t have the time.
But it will find its way into the shrines of most Sydiots, I’ll guess.
They will discuss its contents for centuries to come.
Strawberry Fair Logo.
Mythology
Let’s add another Syd Barrett myth, shall we? Over at Hoffman’s
Music Corner member APH claims he had several brief Syd
encounters:
I was watching my friends' group the Fire Dept at Strawberry Fair, late
eighties. There was a bald guy in a jumpsuit dancing around
enthusiastically on his own. I was told it was Syd. After that, I
recognised him around Cambridge through the years. Generally just
walking alone. Occasionally doing something like paying for his weekly
shop in pennies, and making everyone wait.
He was quite well
known locally, it wasn't considered the done thing to approach him. I
heard he would scream at people who did that. One look at him, and it
was obvious there was no reason to approach him, he wasn’t the same
person.
The Church wishes to thank: APH, Asdf35, Eleonora Siatoni, Gregory
Taylor, Hallucalation, Julian Palacios, Matthew Cheney, Psych62, Rich
Hall, Rob Chapman, Rontoon, Stephen Coates, Swanlee, Syd Wonder,
Wolfpack, Younglight. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (others than the links above): Baudelaire, Charles: Paris
Spleen 1869, New Directions Publishing, New York, 1970, p.25.
Translated from the French by Louise Varèse. Chapman, Rob: A
Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 134. Palacios,
Julian: Darker Globe: Uncut and Unedited, private publication,
2021, p. 85.
I may have written this before but when my stack of Pink Floyd tribute
CDs threatened to become bigger than actual Pink Floyd albums I gave up
buying those. Most of the time these albums are quite rubbish anyway and
consist of artists who only sell records to their grandmother. I mean,
who has ever heard of Stinking
Lizaveta and their Matilda
Mother cover on the Like Black Holes In The Sky album? Actually that
track is quite good, you can have a listen by clicking on the image
below.
It was Göran Nystrom from Men
On The Border who reminded me of Love
You, a (mostly Italian) Syd Barrett tribute album that was going to
appear on the 6th of January 2021. I immediately pre-ordered it, in the
heat of the moment, so to speak.
I wanted to have a look at the artists and bands involved and the fact
that I couldn’t find them anywhere made me fear for the worst. It is
never a good sign if even the record company keeps the actual performers
a secret.
I could only hope this wasn’t going to be another Hoshizora No Drive.
That is a 2008 Syd Barrett tribute album from Japan that I once received
from the head guru of Birdie Hop. Most songs on it sound like Godzilla
with a toothache.
Mojo had a Madcap Laughs Again CD in 2010. It only scored 53% on the Late
Night forum, based on 18 votes. I gave it a 4
myself but the passing of time has somewhat sweetened my opinion,
based upon the three or four tracks that aren’t totally shite.
Stand out tracks are Mark Almond’s version of Late
Night and Field Music’s Terrapin,
although Eternal Isolation, the administrator of the Late Night forum,
found that it sounded like a shampoo commercial. But that was 2010,
we’re a decade later now.
Our project is to collect, for the first time, all the songs Syd Barrett
recorded after his experience with Pink Floyd. To realize it we invited
many artists from various parts of the world – Italy, Mexico, France,
Ireland, UK, USA, Sweden, Japan, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands – and
asked them to choose one song and re-arrange it in their own way.
Well, let’s be honest, that’s just standard promotional chitchat.
The sixth of January 2021 passed by without a trace and it took until
mid-March for the album to finally arrive, proving once again that the
terms Italian and Efficacy will never match.
Update 2021.04.01: according to Luca Ferrari the delay was due to
problems at Gonzo Multimedia, an English company, BTW.
So enough dilly-dallying let’s play the CDs and publish one of those
Holy Church reviews in telegram style.
CD1.
TERRAPIN - ANDREA ACHILLI (Italy) 2'59" I like the
chill-out arrangement but the singing is below par. 5.6/10.
NO GOOD TRYING - LUNA PARK (France) 3'15" Nice try, but
again, the singing could be much better. 5.4/10.
LOVE YOU - EUGENE (Italy) 2'24" Turning Love You into a
novelty tune à la Devo. 5.9/10 for
the effort.
NO MAN'S LAND - HUMUS (Mexico) 2'27" Power version but
(again, sigh) average singing. 4.8/10.
HERE I GO - MAX ZARUCCHI (Italy) 4'52" 0/10.
A track Italians invented the word vaffanculo for.
Love You CD1. Art: Matteo Regattin.
OCTOPUS - SHERPA (Italy) 4'02" Very close to the
original. With some extra effort, this could’ve been an excellent cover. 6.4/10.
GOLDEN HAIR - IN THE LABYRINTH (Sweden) 7'41" It starts
close to the original, then it glides into a surprisingly nice Indian
raga prog-fantasy. Unfortunately, it loses its momentum after a few
minutes. This could’ve been saved by adding some uplifting beats. 7.3/10.
LONG GONE – BARYOGENESIS (Italy) 3'27" Close to the
original, it has potential but gimmicks can’t save it. 5.3/10
SHE TOOK A LONG COLD LOOK - ALANJEMAAL (Italy) 5'55" This
starts promising with an intro that puts you on the wrong leg, which –
in my opinion – is always a good way to tackle a cover. The singing is –
again – awful and what is left is a good old space rocker… 6.9/10.
FEEL - HIS MAJESTY THE BABY (Italy) 3'37" This is the
Luca Ferrari who gave us the quirky Fish Out Of The Water in a
previous century. Beautifully written (in Italian), but badly translated
into English (not by him, I might say). Unfortunately, his track on Love
You is an experiment gone bad. 3.0/10.
IF IT'S IN YOU - HENRIETTA AND THE FIVES (Italy) 3'45" Despite
the quite traditional rendition (with raga influences) I’m going to give
this a 6.8/10. At least it is a track
that tries to achieve something.
LATE NIGHT - DUNCAN MAITLAND (Ireland) 3'39" A nice cover
from this ex-Pugwash musician. It stays close to the original but
manages to bring the message over. 7.0/10.
OPEL - GALERIE 65 (USA) 5'43" It starts by slowing down
the song to a very intimate level. There is a nice instrumental bridge
before the song ends with a less convincing epilogue. 6.0/10.
DOLLY ROCKER - THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (Italy) 3'16" 5.6/10
for the effort. The original is not really great either.
WORD SONG - QUARTO STATO DELLA MATERIA (Italy) 4'37" I
was looking forward to this. The original has got virtually no tune and
we all know that the lyrics are an experimental mess. The band QSDM
turns it into a REM-like tune. 7.2/10.
SWAN LEE - HIBUSHIBIRE (Japan) 4'07" This is Hoshizora No
Drive all over. The freakbeat outro can't salvage the intro,
unfortunately. 3.0/10.
LET'S SPLIT - MICHELE GENTILE (Italy) 2'54" This one took
me by surprise. This could well turn into my personal summer hit. I’ll
play it on my radio show one day. 6.9/10.
Love You CD2. Art: Matteo Regattin.
TWO OF A KIND - DAVE HARRIS & ZEUS B HELD (UK) 2'29" From
Rick Wright’s teammate in Zee, here is Two Of A Kind that might well be
a Rick Wright tune anyway. It’s a fun tune and that is how I look at it. 6.3/10.
ASTRONOMY DOMINE - BORIS SAVOLDELLI & UMBERTO PETRIN (Italy)
4'01" Turning Astronomy into a lounge jazz fantasy. The intro is
quite brilliant, but I sense that this tune could’ve been much better.
It lacks some salt and pepper, so to speak. 6.0/10.
End of CD1 with an average of 5.5 points
out of 10.
CD2
BABY LEMONADE - ST 37 (USA) 6'08" The musicians try
imitating the Baby Lemonade intro and fail at it. Then they try
imitating Syd’s vocals. They fail. Then they try to imitate Hawkwind but
Hawkwind does it better. 4.8/10.
LOVE SONG - LA FORMA DELLE NUVOLE (Italy) 3'31" Close to
the original, quite folky with a few unexpected surprises which made me
add some points. 6.1/10.
DOMINOES - SULA BASSANA (Germany) 5'46" Tries to give
Dominoes an experimental – slightly Floydian – feel but the result is
not immediately satisfactory. This is one of those songs that has
potential and is asking for better treatment. 6.8/10.
IT IS OBVIOUS - STEREOKIMONO (Italy) 3'30" Making
pub-rock out of Barrett, although the song explores many musical
territories. Nice try. 6.6/10.
RATS - PHOSPHENE (UK) 2'14" Phosphene is John Cavanagh,
whom we all revere for his Floydian knowledge. He has tried to turn
Barrett into a minimalistic industrial electronic outfit à la Front 242
but doesn’t quite succeed. 4.0/10.
MAISIE – THEEUNFORESEEN (Belgium) 4'04" Maisie is a
somewhat underrated track by Barrett and with this cover version, it
will certainly not grow in popularity. 4.7/10.
GIGOLO AUNT - THE AIRWAVES (Sweden) 5'10" It's OK but
could've been a bit more daring and original. With over 5 minutes it
takes much too long. 5.8/10.
WAVING MY ARMS IN THE AIR / I NEVER LIED TO YOU - LUCA RAIO
(Italy) 5'28" Song #1 is a folky carbon copy of the original,
not bad, but not really inventive. The surprise lies in the bridge
between the two parts. Part #2 tries to bring a more emotive version of
I Never Lied To You, which has always been one of the more poignant and
powerful moments of Barrett, but it fails miserably. 6.1/10.
WINED AND DINED - KABLE (USA) 4'04" Close to the
original. No frills, no thrills. 6.4/10.
WOLFPACK - KEEPER OF ATLANTIS (USA) 5'37" Yep, it’s again
one of those. 3.3/10.
Turtle by Ian Barrett.
EFFERVESCING ELEPHANT - BOTTI & PAVONI from GREENWALL (Italy)
3'02" At least a track where some fantasy has been used. It
might even have been sillier for me. 6.5/10.
BIRDIE HOP - TRESPASSERS W (The Netherlands) 3'14" Yep,
it’s again one of those. 3.5/10.
LANKY PART 1 - ALFREDO LONGO feat. SEBA PAVIA 4'31" A jam
imitating a jam. 5.0/10 for the effort.
MILKY WAY - MEN ON THE BORDER (Sweden) 5'10" A
(shortened) track from their Blackbird album. See our review here: Blackbird:
Fly Into The Light. One of the very rare occasions on this
compilation where you can hear there is a tight band behind the song,
rather than a hobby project. 7.2/10.
BOB DYLAN BLUES - JOSS COPE (UK) 4'17" A man and his
guitar in a great version of this tune. 8.0/10.
RHAMADAN - MORNING SCALES THE MOUNTAIN (USA) 9'43" The
story of how Syd and Jerry Garcia met, in syncopated pandemonium. 6.7/10.
VEGETABLE MAN - NICK BENSEN (USA) 3'59" It’s OK, I guess,
but it’s not spectacular. 6.0/10.
End of CD2 with an average of 5.7points out of 10.
Conclusion: 5.6 points out of 10.
What I feared about this tribute album came true. It's a mixed bag with
about the same amount of nays and yeas. A single CD, with half the songs
weeded out, would’ve sufficed. (And weirdly enough the average score
would then have been 6.66 points out of
10.) What is even more perplexing is the fact that a great part of the
human race seems to have lost the ability to sing but that this doesn’t
stop them from doing so.
But at least all of the artists can now proudly say to their grand-mum:
"Look bonny, I’ve got a record out."
This is a review of Charles Beterams’ book Pink Floyd In De Kuip ‘88,
about the Floyd’s two concerts in Rotterdam in June 1988. It’s in Dutch
and so is this review. Get over it!
Het staat in mijn geheugen gegrift alsof het gisteren was. Op maandag 13
juni 1988 wachtten we ongeduldig aan De Kuip voor wat het evenement van
het jaar zou moeten worden. Het was één van de helderste dagen van het
jaar en Pink Floyd had besloten om het concert wat later te laten
beginnen. Rechts van mij was er een lichtreclame die las ‘Groen is de
kleur… van Pisang Ambon’ en dat was zo ongeveer het enige vertier na
urenlang rechtstaan en wachten… en wachten… en wachten...
Pink Floyds soundscape deed de temperatuur nog wat stijgen en gejuich
weerklonk telkens als er een zachte Echoesiaanse ping door het stadion
klonk. En dan… even wat rumoer met duizenden vingers die naar de lucht
wezen. In de verte verschenen twee vliegtuigjes die boven het stadion
wat stunts uithaalden. Geen enkele band zou het in zijn hoofd halen om
met zo’n, tja, ‘stunt’ het publiek warm te maken. We wisten het toen al:
Pink Floyd is bigger than life. Especially live. En dan moest het
concert nog beginnen. Ik krijg er nog steeds kippenvel van.
Charles Beterams weet er ongetwijfeld meer over te vertellen en doet dat
ook in het 110 bladzijden tellende boek Pink Floyd In De Kuip ‘88. Je
dient je te reppen om nog een exemplaar te pakken te krijgen want de
eerste (gesigneerde) druk van 500 exemplaren is zo goed als de deur uit.
En als ik me niet vergis blijft het daarbij.
Het boek begint met een beknopte geschiedenis van Pink Floyd in Holland
zoals dat – meer in detail – beschreven werd in Charles’ vorige boeken
Pink Floyd in de Polder (2007) en de opvolger daarvan Pink Floyd in
Nederland (2017).
Skyhawk Stuntvlieger.
Voor maniakale Floyd liefhebbers is dit een beetje redundant en deze
inleiding hapt ongeveer een derde van het boekje weg, een beetje als die
ellenlange intro’s van Pink Floyd zelve dus… Een klein foutje, denk ik,
op bladzijde 30 waar staat dat Nick Mason besluit ‘om zijn geliefde 1962
GTO Ferrari van de hand te doen’ om de Momentary Lapse tour te
bekostigen. Als ik me niet vergis diende de wagen enkel als onderpand
voor een lening en heeft Nick Mason nog steeds die wagen in zijn bezit.
(Besef je nu dat Pink Floyd fans eindeloos kunnen vitten?)
Op bladzijde 34 kan het boek eindelijk van start gaan en belanden we in
Feijenoord, via een ommetje in het Kralingse bos, want in 1987 is het
nog niet zeker waar het vliegende varken in Nederland zal zweven.
Er is veel aandacht voor de voorbereiding van het optreden. Beterams
haalt voorbeelden aan uit de ‘European Rider’ die zowat alles
beschrijft, van de immense stroomvoorziening voor het mega-concert tot
het muziekwinkeltje om de hoek dat open moet blijven als er in extremis
een set snaren moet worden aangekocht. En er moet natuurlijk een dokter
van wacht zijn voor wanneer een muzikant plots een ‘little pinprick’
nodig heeft. Wat betreft alternatief rookmateriaal is er in het stadion
meer dan voldoende keus, zoals mijn kornuiten en ik ter plaatse konden
vaststellen.
Feijenoord, zoals u ongetwijfeld weet, bevindt zich in de stad en er
zijn een heleboel vergunningen aan te vragen. Je wil nu eenmaal niet dat
pyrotechnische effecten een woonwijk in de fik zullen steken. De hele
organisatorische mikmak, het gelobby en de jacht op tickets neemt
ongeveer een derde van het boekje in beslag en is verdomd interessant.
Op bladzijde 68 kan het (eerste) concert eindelijk starten en dat wordt
– spijtig genoeg – beschreven in amper twee bladzijden en een half. Het
tweede optreden krijgt wat meer aandacht met drie en een half bladzijden
tekst. Ik vind dat dit best wat gedetailleerder had gekund en dat is –
voor mij – een fikse tegenvaller op het eind.
Icarus (Learning To Fly).
Geen show zonder toegift. Als ‘encore’ bevat het boek een artikel van
Peter Vos, journalist bij Music Maker, over de technische installatie
van de band, inclusief de kanaalindeling van het hoofdmengpaneel. Een
droom voor de techneuten onder ons en een hoop koeterwaals voor degenen
die nauwelijks het verschil kennen tussen een versterker, een
voorversterker en een equalizer. Best lekker.
Natuurlijk bevat het boek een heleboel (exclusieve) foto’s, tekeningen,
plannen, documenten… dat zijn we van Beterams ondertussen wel gewend,
geen slecht woord daarover. Maar het gevoel dat ik heb is dat het geheel
qua tekst toch wat magertjes uitvalt en dat het (nog wat)
gedetailleerder had gekund.
Al bij al een leuk souvenir voor wie erbij was. Ik was erbij en zal het
me mijn leven lang blijven herinneren.
Releasing it as Pink Floyd instead of David
Gilmour and friends will get the song free promotion and as such
every (online) newspaper has already brought it up, although not all
reviews are that positive. The (Daily) Telegraph, for instance,
describes it as an
overblown 1980s Eurovision entry.
Update 2022 04 10: 24 hours after its launch, the song hit the #1
position of iTunes downloads in 27 countries.
The song uses the vocals of Andriy
Khlyvnyuk, singing a 1914 Ukrainian patriotic song 'Oi
u Luzi Chervona Kalyna' (Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow). The
roots of the song can be found in a traditional from 1640 as explained
in the next video from Metal Pilgrim.
It is not the first time Pink Floyd has used an outsider to sing a song, Roy
Harper and Clare
Torry come to mind, but it is a very rare occasion (not counting
those two canine vocalists: Seamus
and Mademoiselle Nobs). Pink Floyd doesn't have a tradition either of
covering songs, the only examples I can think of is Green
Onions on an early TV show and the King
Bee demo. (Gilmour and Waters have recorded/streamed a few covers
though.)
Gilmour and his merry men have the habit of turning Floyd's history into
their hands and this time it is no different. The blurb says this is the
first new original music they have recorded together as a band since
1994's The
Division Bell. It makes me wonder what happened with Louder
Than Words, from The
Endless River, that ended the Floyd in a Yoko Ono kind of way. Fans
are still dissing and fighting about it.
Gilmour has taken an a capella song from a Ukrainian singer-soldier and
added some typical Floydian ingredients in the mix. On the video, we can
see he uses his 1955 Fender Esquire that is prominent on the About
Face album cover, but more than probably he changed that for a
Strat, at least for the second solo.
David Gilmour, 2022.
David's guitar play is, as always, impeccable - gold dust as one
fan describes it. To my amazement, plenty of room is given to Nick
Mason in the second part of the song. He spices it with his typical Masonic
drum fills. He still is the best drummer for the band and the only
member who has been present on every album, in every incarnation. Rick's
keyboards are missed but you could do a lot worse than with Nitin
Sawhney. (Spoiler: will he be on the solo album David Gilmour is
currently recording?)
The song is short, three minutes and a half. Luckily Gilmour didn't fall
into the trap of adding a six minutes guitar solo on a one couplet song
like he used to do in the past.
Bandsmen by Remote Control
On the Steve
Hoffman Music Forum, the song is heavily discussed and, as usual,
opinions tend to differ, with online missile shootings between the David
and Roger camps. Pigheaded people have forgotten that Roger
Waters left the band some 37 zillion years ago.
Nick Mason, 2022.
One can’t deny that Waters’ opinion about the war is somewhat
prevaricating, one fan put it like this:
Given some of Roger's asinine comments on the subject of Russia's
invasion of Ukraine, I think it's for the best that he's not involved.
I agree with some of Waters' political opinions, but the fact that he
was a welcome guest on the one-sided propaganda channel that is RT (Russia
Today) has been bothering me. Playing the Ukrainian Nazi card is a
bit stupid after you have been welcomed by a TV station that has invited
conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Holocaust
deniers.
Waters is writhing around like a snail in a saucerful of salt,
condemning the war but trying to blame NATO and the USA. I’m old and
realistic enough to understand that international politics is a dirty
business. I agree that the ‘democratic’ Western world has played a
dubious role in the Ukrainian Orange
Revolution and its aftermath. In something resembling a mediocre Ian
Fleming story, they overplayed their cards, perhaps not realising
that Vladimir Putin is an even bigger madman than Donald Trump ever was.
Pink Floyd. When
The Tigers Broke Free.
Just Before Dawn
Floyd anoraks will fight over everything, even the use of the font on
the cover picture for the song. It uses a letter type that is very close
to the one we know from The
Wall. It is even closer to the lettering on the anti-war single When
The Tigers Broke Free, from 1982. We leave it in the middle if this
is a deliberate stab at Roger Waters or just a clever marketing trick.
Hey, Hey, Rise Up is a very uncommon single by the Floyd, but
these are uncommon times. Once you get used to the pompous singing you
can discover its magic or as Gilmour ironically put it: the rock god
guitar player. Bloody well done.
Buy it.
(Link for recalcitrant browsers: Pink Floyd - Hey
Hey Rise Up (feat. Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox))
Pink Floyd 2022
Pink Floyd 2022: Nitin Sawhney, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Guy Pratt.
Many thanks to: Metal Pilgrim, Steve Hoffmann Forum and its many
visitors. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Petridis, Alexis: ‘This
is a crazy, unjust attack’: Pink Floyd re-form to support Ukraine,
The
Guardian, 7 April 2022.
We have sometimes been harsh about David
Gilmour who reconfigured the past in favour of his colleague Rick
Wright, but the friendship between Gilmour and Wright was an honest
and genuine one.
In an emotional introduction, Aubrey
Powell tells how David Gilmour was sitting at Rick’s deathbed
(2008). At a memorial party, where Roger
Waters was absent, old surviving friends from the Underground days
were present. Jon
Lord and Jeff
Beck played some songs and David and Nick, with Guy Pratt, Jon Carin
and Tim Renwick remembered Rick with Great
Gig and Wish
You Were Here.
Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell was sitting next to Storm
Thorgerson, who was in a wheelchair after a stroke, and both men
realised that they were in the autumn of their lives. Powell knew that
if he had to write some memoirs, he had to get on with it. It still took
him more than a decade but in 2022 he published Through The Prism:
Untold Rock Stories from the Hipgnosis Archive.
Madcaps Story Book.
Madcaps
Through The Prism is, for once, not a coffee-table photo extravaganza,
but a 320 pages book filled with anecdotes and stories about Hipgnosis
and their many friends, who were often also their clients.
The first chapter 'Laying Ghosts to Rest' is about Cambridge and the
boy/man who started the career of Pink Floyd and indirectly Hipgnosis as
well. An autobiography is based on memories and not always on facts and
as such we forgive that Po repeats the story that Syd
Barrett was an admirer of Pink
Anderson and Floyd
Council. In a previous post on this blog, Step
It Up And Go, we have stated that there were no easily obtainable
records of these two bluesmen, certainly not in the UK. The chance that
Syd Barrett listened to one of their songs is very, very close to zero.
And, contrarious as we are, Syd didn’t contrive the term Pink Floyd
either, one of his beatnik friends did: Stephen Pyle. Syd borrowed the
line when he had to improvise a new name for his band.
Through The Prism is not a Pink Floyd biography, but a story about a man
called Po. Syd happens to be present from time to time. One day, he
takes some LSD in Storm's garden and is fascinated for hours by an
orange, a plum, and a box of matches. This event, ‘small as a molehill’,
has grown into a mountain over the years, but of course, Hipgnosis is to
blame for that. Storm turned the anecdote into a record cover (photo).
In late autumn 1969 Powell visits Syd's flat to take some publicity
shots for Madcap, the so-called yoga pictures. Aubrey writes that Storm
had taken the album cover shots a few weeks earlier. That is not wrong
if you go by Vulcan logic, but it has been established that the cover
shoot dates from April 1969. That is about 20 to 24 weeks earlier, not
'a few'. Not a word about Iggy the Eskimo, nor about the presence of
another photographer who was still their friend, but not for long: Mick
Rock (see also: Rock
of Ages).
The Syd chapter ends with the invention of the name Hipgnosis.
Powell testifies how they almost catch Syd red-handed, a pen in his
hand, seconds after he wrote HIP-GNOSIS on the white front door.
I always believed this was something of an urban legend, invented by
Storm and Po to give the name extra cachet, but if this testimony is
accurate it leaves no doubt that Syd was behind it.
Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd.
Secrets
As a young man, Aubrey Powell is more a hoodlum and a swindler than an
artist. Peter
Jenner even has to bail him out of jail, but slowly he finds his way
as a photographer, helped by Storm. When Pink Floyd asks them for the
cover of A
Saucerful Of Secrets their career lifts off. That cover, actually a
collage of pop culture and esoteric images, is photographed in black and
white and coloured by hand afterwards (photo).
For Atom
Heart Mother the Floyd want a non-psychedelic cover, so nothing like
Saucerful, More
or Ummagumma.
The solution comes from conceptual artist John Blake, whose path they
will cross several times. Why not a cow? A cow it is (picture).
Equally uncharacteristic is the cover for The
Dark Side Of The Moon. Again it is Pink Floyd who want something
else, much to the annoyance of a stubborn Storm Thorgerson who tries to
push a picture of the Silver
Surfer. They find the prism concept in a popular science book and
because Storm and Po can't draw they ask George
Hardie to finish it (photo).
Dark Side is much more than a record, it is a worldwide recognisable
symbol and Powell gives some examples of how the record (and its sleeve)
have become instruments to protest against censorship and war.
Pig sketch, by Jeffrey Shaw (Hipgnosis).
Here, there and everywhere
For Wish
You Were Here Hipgnosis devises some art, built around a theme of
absence and the number 4. Four like 4 members of the band, 4 elements
(earth, air, fire, water) and the 4 panels on a gatefold sleeve. Only,
the final product is packaged in a single sleeve, but one with a twist.
One day, it must have been the 5th of June 1975, an almost
unrecognisable Syd Barrett enters the office, asking where the band is.
Richard Evans, of the Hipgnosis crew, replies that they are probably at
Abbey Road. Po accompanies Syd to the street where he walks to Soho, ‘a
confused and forlorn figure’ (see also: Shady
Diamond).
The concept of the burning man puzzles Aubrey. How can he take a picture
of that? For Storm, the solution is simple: set him on fire. Even
better, set him on fire in America (photo).
Let’s remember folks, these are the golden days of rock. You wanna take
a pic of a pyramid. Fly to Egypt. You want to check a few lakes out. Fly
to California. All expenses paid, including the huge bill of ‘special
medicine’ to get through those lonesome nights.
Look. Hear. 10CC.
Hype Gnosis
Dark Side and Houses
of the Holy (Led
Zeppelin) make Hipgnosis nearly as big as the rock stars they
graphically represent (photo).
On a trip to Vegas Po stays in Frank Sinatra’s personal suite at Caesars
Palace. Escort girls and coke (not the soft-drink variety) are
included in the service, although Po claims he declines both offers.
Po loves the wide American scenery and trips to the USA are regularly
made. Hiring a plane to fly over the desert to find a great location: no
problem. Hiring a helicopter to shoot some pictures from the air: no
problem. Hiring figurants, actors, stuntmen, and props: no problem. Rock
‘n’ Roll pays well in the seventies.
Hipgnosis not only make fantastic covers, but they have some duds as
well. Al
Stewart is so angry about the Time
Passages sleeve that he will never speak to Po again. Needless to
say that Hipgnosis lose a client that day (photo).
Obviously, the memoirs aren't about Pink Floyd alone. Peter
Gabriel, Wings,
and 10CC
all have their entries. Po's stories about Led Zep, who have some
gangsters refurbished as bodyguards, are so unbelievable you might think
you have ended up in The Godfather. There’s some weird occult shit as
well, Jimmy Page was called the Dark Lord by the other members of the
band.
Not the greatest picture.
Pigs
The sleeve for Animals
is Roger Waters’ idea to begin with. Storm Thorgerson is (again) pissed
when his idea for a sleeve is downvoted and refuses to speak to Waters.
When Storm (in the book Walk Away Renée) calls the Animals sleeve a
Hipgnosis project it is up to Roger to be offended. The next Pink Floyd
albums, with Roger Waters at the helm, no longer have a Hipgnosis sleeve.
Despite the friction between Storm and Roger, Po Powell is commissioned
to supervise the shoot. He hires 8 photographers and asks Nigel Lesmoir
Gordon to coordinate some filming from a helicopter.
On the first day, Algie (the pig) refuses to soar to the skies and they
postpone the shooting for the next day. When the pig breaks free on day
two Powell suddenly realises he has forgotten to rebook the marksman to
shoot it down. It could’ve been a disaster, but luckily it isn’t.
Although unwanted, it will go down in history as the biggest rock
publicity stunt ever (photo).
Time Passages, Al Stewart.
Hyper-Realism
The thing with Hipgnosis is that they want to realise their surreal
ideas in the real world. For a Wings Greatest
Hits album, it is Paul McCartney’s wish to have a picture of a Demétre
Chiparus statue standing in the snow on top of a mountain. Hipgnosis
flies the statue to Switzerland where it is transported by helicopter to
the Gorner
Glacier. The team consists of several photographers, mountain
rescuers and a pilot.
It is a great story, but frankly, the picture could have been made in
the studio with cotton balls for snow and a picture of the Matterhorn
as a backdrop (photo).
For a 10CC cover, Po wants to put a sheep on a sofa, by the sea. He
flies to Hawaii, where there is only one sheep on the entire island. He
has a sofa custom-made by a film props company (photo).
Powell shows his expense sheet for the shoot. It is £2,280 in 1980 money
or over £10,000 ($12,800/€11,800) today. The invoice to 10CC is double
of that.
No wonder Po starts behaving like the rock stars he frequents, including
a nasty habit with cocaine. Everybody who works with Storm Thorgerson
knows that he can be incredibly stubborn. With the rise of MTV, Aubrey
and Powell start a film company, but cracks are appearing in their
relationship. The amicable banter of the past is gone and Po goes his
way, becoming a successful filmmaker and creative director.
Houses of the Holy, Led Zeppelin.
A New Machine
Years later they reconcile and when Storm realises he has not a long
time to live he suggests that Po must be the Floyd’s art director.
Powell is responsible for the successful Their
Mortal Remains exhibition and book. Internal Floyd wars make it
impossible to release a Mortal Remains compilation (not that anybody
needed an extra Pink Floyd record). We finally get the confirmation that The
Early Years box-set was going to include a miniature car but alas
the band has always been known for its greediness (my comment, not Po’s).
Through The Prism is not a detailed autobiography but a
collection of many (funny and interesting) anecdotes about Po’s
graphical output and his wacky clients. Powell stays rather vague about
his personal life and the relationship with Storm Thorgerson that was
very troubled for a couple of decades. Attentive readers though will
have the impression there is a new girlfriend or wife in every second
chapter. Rock ‘n’ Roll!
For the Pink Floyd, Led Zep, 10CC and Macca anorak there is more than
enough material to like this book, about those days when rock still was
the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
This year 2023 is already a big one, dear sistren and brethren
of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. The
Dark Side Of The Moon celebrates its 50th birthday, and does so, in
true Floydian tradition, with an absolutely superfluous but expensive
box set.
It contrasts a lot with the good people from the Yeeshkul forum,
whose first task was to preserve and weed out Pink
Floyd live tapes and out-takes, and doing that entirely for free.
Unfortunately, the Yeeshkul forum stopped its benevolent work on the
28th of February, after having served the Pink Floyd collector for 17
years.
Luckily, there are a lot of good people around, and an entirely new
forum has taken the relay baton, so to speak. RIP Yeeshkul, and welcome
to Raving
And Drooling.
Raving and Drooling Logo. Through
the Prism - Aubrey Powell.
Through The Prism
About a year ago, we reviewed Through
The Prism. It is an excellent pot-pourri of Hipgnosis
anecdotes, penned down by Aubrey
Powell, who was top dog #2 in the art and design collective. But as
far as autobiographies go, they tend to be a bit mild for oneself.
The book was turned into a documentary by Anton
Corbijn in 2022: Squaring
the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) that unfortunately has not seen
a general release (yet?). There is also an excellent Storm
Thorgerson video-biography by Roddy Bogawa: Taken
By Storm: the art of Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis (2015).
Both documentaries have interviews with friends and/or clients of
Hipgnosis: TBS = Taken by Storm STC = Squaring the Circle
Taken by Storm & Squaring the Circle.
Name
TBS
STC
Alan Parsons (TBS)
⚛
Catherine Wheel (TBS)
⚛
David Gilmour (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Graham Gouldman (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Jimmy Page (STC)
⚛
Muse (TBS)
⚛
Nick Mason (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Noel Gallagher (STC)
⚛
Paul McCartney (STC)
⚛
Peter Gabriel (TBS)
⚛
Robert Plant (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Roger Waters (STC)
⚛
Steve Miller (TBS)
⚛
The Cranberries (TBS)
⚛
The Mars Volta (TBS)
⚛
Us and Them - Mark Blake.
Us and Them
So when Mark
Blake announced 'Us and Them: The Authorised Story of Hipgnosis'
we were glad that someone would finally tell the whole tale, preferably
with warts and all. We feared a bit that the authorised word in the
title would result in a Teletubbies treatment of the lot, but that
doesn't seem to be the case. As Mark Blake said in a recent interview,
Po wrote the foreword but did not ask for copy approval and only read
the book when it was published.
Pink Floyd is a band that is regularly written about in this biography.
The majority of its album covers have been made by Hipgnosis and/or its
spinoffs. The rest of the Cambridge Mafia gets mentioned as well.
Throughout the book, names pop up that you can also find on this
illustrious blog: Emo Moore, Gala (or Gayla) Pinion, Lyndsay Corner,
Matthew Scurfield, Nigel Lesmoir Gordon, Pip Carter, Ponji Robinson...
Some modelled for Hipgnosis, some worked for them, and others just
shared a drink and a spliff.
In ‘Through The Prism’ author Po Powell is pretty sure it was a certain
Syd Barrett who scribbled that neologism on the front door. Mark Blake
cites Storm Thorgerson who wasn’t completely convinced:
Storm claimed it was the poet Adrian Haggard, one of the Better Books
crowd and a friend of Nigel Gordon’s. P94.
Storm Thorgerson - Po Powell - Peter Christopherson.
Storm - Po - Peter
While most people, myself included, thought that Hipgnosis was mainly
Storm's brainchild, it was a duo, consisting of Storm and Po. In the
mid-seventies, a third partner joined the team, who even surpassed the
other two in eccentricity: Peter
'Sleazy'
Christopherson.
Peter was a member of the avant-garde art performance collective COUM
Transmissions which later evolved into the anti-pop band Throbbing
Gristle. Shows of COUM included nudity, flogging, and all naked
activity your perverted mind can think of. One day, Peter arrived too
late for a TV commercial because he first had to wash the shite out of
his ears. Literally.
So who were these Hipgnosis guys?
Storm Thorgerson was the main brain, the leader of the pack. Everyone
agrees he was super intelligent and all-knowing. He was also a
first-class pedant and pretentious asshole who motivated his underpaid
personnel with screams and insults. Always brooding on Art, with a
capital A, he would summon his serfs while sitting on the loo or lying
in the bath. Pink Floyd video archivist Lana Topham, who professionally
wrecked some videos in The
Early Years box, refused to work with Storm on The
Division Bell after some bad encounters with him.
"I will not collaborate with Storm, he’s a nightmare," and I left. P364.
She only agreed to work for Diet Floyd if the following rule was applied.
If I found him [Storm] being mean to anyone, he was to apologise
immediately. P365.
I've Had Enough
Storm was difficult for anyone, including his clients. When Paul
McCartney wanted his wife Linda
Eastman to take the cover shoot for the album Venus
and Mars, Storm said that he didn't think it necessary for him to be
present. It made him persona non grata. Luckily, Po Powell picked
up the pieces, and as such, Hipgnosis is responsible for a few Wings
albums. At a Christmas party hosted by the former Beatle, Po was
invited, but not Storm.
I told Storm I was going and he said, "How can you go without me?"’ says
Po. I said, "Easily, because I have been invited and you haven’t, and
they are a client." I turned up at the party and there’s Storm behind
me. Brian Brolly [managing director of MPL Communications] stood there
with a big bouncer and he said, "Storm, you’re not invited." P201.
While Storm was the bully, Po Powell was the diplomat of Hipgnosis,
taking in those clients that Storm refused to handle. He was aware of
the fact that money had to come in, some way or another.
Scam at Cam
That Po didn't mind how money was coming in as long as it was coming in
was proven by his pre-Hipgnosis career. He stole cars for a living and
cashed in checks that weren't his, using a cunning plan. The banks (and
police) eventually found out, and Po was arrested. He had the right to
call one person and went for… Peter
Jenner. When the Floyd manager found out it was for bank fraud, he
refused to bail Po out.
"It was Syd Barrett who made Peter go back," says Po. "Syd was conscious
of looking after other people. (…) Peter returned with the money, for
which I am forever grateful." P88.
Po received a suspended sentence, and to his amazement, the bank never
asked for the stolen money to be returned.
Storm, the emperor.
A Saucerful of Secrets
The Floyd was recording their second album, and Storm was pushing to use
painter (and friend) David Henderson for the sleeve. Pink Floyd,
however, turned this down, and Po stepped in instead. David Henderson
did help with the cover though and would return, a decade later, on the
cover of Led
Zeppelin’s In
Through The Outdoor.
And that brings us to Led Zeppelin. Po Powell befriended the band, whose
roadies and personnel were often gangsters, thugs who liked to juggle
knives and guns around to make sure their opinion was being heard.
Plant, Page, and their manager Peter
Grant liked the Hipgnosis photographer, and they didn't try to
haggle on the price like Floyd's manager always did.
Hipgnosis was seen as an art collective, and its reputation skyrocketed.
Powell lived the rock-star life with a villa, swimming pool, and
speedboat in Florida. He also acquired some dubious friends there, the
types that Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs arrested in the weekly Miami
Vice show.
The end of the seventies saw a wind of change. Punk bands had 15£
snapshots for a record sleeve. There's no need to fly first class to
America to take a picture in a New York back alley if you can take the
underground to find one in London.
Stella Artois by Hipgnosis.
Stella Artois
Po Powell also took in some clients for publicity shots. The brewery in
my home town, Stella Artois, had some faint surreal pictures taken to
propagate their wife beater. I don’t think this was the finest moment of
Hipgnosis.
Perhaps it's a Cambridge thing, but something Hipgnosis had in common
with their #1 client, Pink Floyd, was that they didn't want to pay their
collaborators. Assistants were scandalously underpaid and were explained
that the experience alone was worth their salary.
Greenback
With the coming of MTV,
bands and record companies find new ways to throw money around.
Hipgnosis is disbanded, and Greenback starts. It is a video
production company founded by Storm, Po, Peter, and (for a while) Nigel
Gordon. The three Hipgnosis partners separately continue with
photography, though. Just like a rock band whose members take on solo
projects.
Storm finally sees a dream come true: that of being a moviemaker. Early
videos include Paul Young's 'Wherever
I Lay My Hat', Yes' 'Owner
of a Lonely Heart' and David Gilmour's 'Blue
Light' which has been ridiculed ever since.
Storm and Po.
Within three years, Greenback Films is turning millions of dollars a
year. But then disaster strikes and it's their own bloody fault. Po
manages to put his life back on track after a bad cocaine habit, but the
MTV lifestyle also reaches Storm and Peter.
Storm's edict has always been that ‘art comes first, the money later'.
If there is a budget for 100 dancers, but Storm wants 200, then 200 are
hired, for art’s sake. Who pays for the extras? Greenback does. Barry
Gibb’s Now
Voyager goes two million dollars over budget, while Storm and Barry
are at each other’s throats for most of the filming.
It’s 1985, and Greenback is one hundred thousand pounds in the red. The
three amigos suddenly aren’t friends any more and talk through
their lawyers. At a bank meeting to settle the debts, Po arrives with
33,000 pounds of his own money, but Storm and Peter don’t even bother to
show up. For the next twelve years, Storm and Po won’t talk to each
other.
Solo Projects
As we all know, Storm will be responsible for the sleeves for the
newborn Pink Floyd. Po gets multiple orders from his old friends Robert
Plant and Paul McCartney. Peter Christopherson has his projects,
including the avant-garde experimental band Coil.
In his later life, Storm becomes the hustler of the gang. He sells the
Hipgnosis catalogue to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd but forgets to inform
Po Powell, who is pretty pissed about it. On top of that, Storm keeps
some originals behind that he sells to collectors for pocket money. One
rumour goes that he asks Pink Floyd for one million pounds as he
believes the Hipgnosis artwork is responsible for 15% of their record
sales. The band politely refuses.
Hipgnosis business card (Roger Dean).
RIP
On the opening night of the Paris ‘Pink
Floyd Interstellar’ exhibition (2003), Storm has a stroke and is
rushed to the hospital. He is partly paralysed. Pink Floyd and Roger
Waters help him financially.
Several key figures pass away: Steve O Rourke, Syd Barrett, Rick Wright.
Peter Christopherson has a fatal heart attack in 2010, and Storm
Thorgerson dies in 2013. Po Powell takes over Storm’s role and becomes
the creative director for all things Pink Floyd.
Conclusion
Mark Blake has written biographies about Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin
manager Peter Grant, and as such, parts of these books have trickled
down into Us And Them. One could compare Us And Them with Floyd's The
Final Cut which was, in part, a sequel to The Wall. But obviously, the
Hipgnosis biography is not as tedious as The Final Cut. It has plenty of
juicy anecdotes, and it is, in the words of its author, 'a black comedy'.
It’s nice to see that Iggy gets a thank you from Mark Blake. Even if you
aren’t into Hipgnosis, it is an excellent book for those fans who want
to know more about the Cantabrigians who went to London to seek fame and
fortune. Recommended reading for Floyd and Zeppelin fans. And Paul
McCartney. And 10CC...
Hipgnosis lead the life of rock stars without putting a single note on
vinyl, except for Sleazy. Somehow I've got the feeling that there is
still more to tell, but some anecdotes should stay hidden in the fog of
times. Rock 'n' fucking Roll!
Blake, Mark: Us and Them: The Authorised Story of Hipgnosis, Nine
Eight Books, London, 2023.
Many Thanks: Mark Blake. Roddy Bogawa, Hipgnosis
Covers. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
In 2017, I reviewed Simon Matthews’ Psychedelic
Celluloid, which lists 120 films that all have something in common
with Swinging
London. This year (2023), Simon was so kind to send me a spiritual
successor to his earlier work. Titled ‘Free Your Mind!’ it
describes in great detail four films set in psychedelic London between
1967 and 1970 and made by the Italian movie legend Giovanni
‘Tinto’ Brass.
Cali-who?
Don’t try to hide the fact that you don’t know who Brass is. He was
behind the infamous Caligula
flick (1979) that we all pretend not to have seen. To Tinto’s defence,
we need to add that the hardcore pornographic scenes it contains were
added without his consent by the Penthouse producers.
Tinto Brass started as an experimental and avant-garde director, but
just like the Polish film director Walerian
Borowczyk, he stumbled into the light-erotica genre with movies such
as All
Ladies Do It, Paprika,
and Frivolous
Lola.
Pink Floyd fun fact #1: In 1976, Walerian Borowczyk made the film La
Marge, described by some as art house erotica. One scene has Silvia
Kristel doing her thing with the intro of Shine
On You Crazy Diamond in the background. It has been rumoured that
Pink Floyd has always refused a DVD release just because of that. Read
More on this blog: La
Marge.
But back to Giovanni Brass. After his studies as a lawyer (pushed by the
family), he decided he wanted to become a photographer or filmmaker. In
1957, he went to Paris, where he joined the world-famous Cinémathèque
Française as an unpaid worker. He managed to consult their
Rolodex and was soon promoted to assistant director and producer of
avant-garde documentaries.
These experimental films were not unlike John
Latham's Speak, with images ‘juxtaposed in an absurd,
violent, satirical, or sinister fashion’, writes Simon Matthews (P36).
Pink Floyd fun fact #2: John Latham's Speak
(1962) was projected behind Pink Floyd at a Roundhouse gig. In 1967, the
band attempted to make a soundtrack for the movie, but it was rejected
by the artist. The improvisational piece, split across nine tracks, can
be found on The Early Years box set.
Tinto Brass' reputation grew fast. Some of his work was censored by the
Italian government, but some were promoted and sponsored by Umberto
Eco.
It didn't take long to make a few take-the-money-and-run films. These
had some success in Italy and Spain like the 1964 sci-fi comedy 'The
Flying Saucer' (1964) and a spaghetti western called 'Yankee'
(1966).
In 1966, he decided it was time to go to London for a pop-style swinging
London movie.
Col Cuore In Gola.
Murder She Wrote: Col Cuore In Gola
Col
Cuore In Gola (CCIG) is also known as Dead Stop, Deadly Sweet, En
cinquième vitesse, Escalation, Heart Beat, Heart in His Mouth, I Am What
I Am, La séptima victima, and Le cœur aux lèvres. As usual for the
German market, the distributors managed to grab a title completely out
of the blue: Das Mädchen aus der Carnaby-Street, although that title
isn’t that bad, for a change, and describes its mood pretty accurately.
Pink Floyd fun fact #3: the soundtrack of Two Weeks in September
has two songs from Michel
Magne sung by David
Gilmour, from the band Jokers
Wild, before he joined Pink Floyd.
For his movie, Tinto Brass managed to hire French film star Jean-Louis
Trintignant and Brigitte Bardot lookalike Ewa
Aulin (from Sweden). The story is even more incomprehensible than
that of Blow-Up, but creating a logical storyline wasn’t something Brass
was after.
It all starts with Jane (Ewa Aulin), who has to identify her father's
body after he was killed in a car accident. Immediately after the
mortuary's visit, she goes dancing in a groovy nightclub, the logical
thing to do when your father has just been declared dead. That's where
Bernard (Jean-Louis Trintignant) finds her looking at another dead man,
a gangster boss who was just shot down. The gangster may have
blackmailed and even killed her father, so the visit to the club was not
that arbitrary after all.
Jane claims she didn’t shoot the criminal, and Bernard immediately
believes her, because boobs and a pretty face. They flee from the scene,
followed by mobsters, the police, and a dwarf(!), leaving a trail of
dead bodies behind (9 in total, if I’m correct), not a very intelligent
move if you want to keep a low profile.
Jean-Louis Trintignant at Granny Takes A Trip.
Running through London, they manage to do some shopping at Granny
Takes A Trip, and they visit the Indica
gallery from Barry
Miles. Throughout the movie, references to underground
counterculture and pop art can be seen, like International
Times posters on a wall. The film often has a comic-strip feel, one
scene even mimics the wacky Batman
punches from the American TV series. Renowned comic book artist Guido
Crepax also worked on this movie, by the way.
Iggy the Eskimo fun fact #1: This blog started in 2008 when a
documentary was found that had Iggy The Eskimo visiting Granny Takes A
Trip. Find more at this blog: IN
Gear.
Ewa Aulin and Jean-Louis Trintignant, running through London. Ewa
Aulin and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Ally Pally
The 12-minute finale of the film takes place at The
14 Hour Technicolor Dream Festival held at Alexandra
Palace on April 29, 1967. Weirdly enough, this is something that is
never mentioned in Pink Floyd biographies or Swinging London books.
Pink Floyd fun fact #4: The Technicolor Dream was to raise funds
for the International Times legal defence fund and was organised on
April 29, 1967. Pink Floyd appeared right at the end of the show, just
as the sun was beginning to rise at around five o'clock in the morning
(already the 30th of April 1967). According to Nick
Mason, Syd was completely distanced from everything going on,
‘whether simply tripping or suffering from a more organic neural
disturbance’.
Technicolo(u)r Overdrive
Simon Matthews gives a few reasons why the Tinto Brass film has been
entirely forgotten when it comes to Ally Pally.
Already in 1968, the movie was reviewed by critics as a blatant Blow-Up
rip-off, released while Col Cuore In Gola was still in the making. Both
films have an erotic photo-shoot scene, although the one from Brass was
shot earlier than the one from Antonioni. This doesn’t take away from
the fact that Blow-Up is regarded as the ultimate Swinging London flick,
with CCIG hiding in its shadow.
Tinto Brass used the technique of guerilla
filmmaking, meaning that he placed his actors in real-life
situations. In this case, the streets and parks of London. While the
actors did their thing, people and tourists walked around, not realising
that a movie was being shot in and around them. It was also a money
saver, as he didn’t need to ask for permission to have a camera crew
lurking around.
Woman dancing at The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream.
Pennies and Pounds
For the filming at Alexandra Palace, he did pay a great deal of money,
and according to Simon Matthews, the funds of the Italian moviemaker
probably saved the organisation from going bankrupt before it even
started.
Aulin and Trintignan walk around in and between the crowd of The 14 Hour
Technicolor Dream. We get some shots of an avant-garde dance troupe and Yoko
Ono’s Cut
Piece, but that’s about it.
Brass did miss a few things that would have made his film immortal, at
least from a historian's perspective.
Pink Floyd fun fact #5: Peter Whitehead was the director of Tonite
Let's All Make Love in London (1967), which had a short musical
piece by Pink Floyd. In 1995, he published ‘London
'66–'67’ an EP and film of Pink Floyd music, containing an
alternative version of ‘Interstellar
Overdrive’ and a previously unreleased track, ‘Nick's Boogie’.
Two: it has been rumoured that Andy
Warhol was watching the event from his Rolls Royce, parked outside.
The pop-art superstar didn’t have the guts to mingle with the mortals
inside.
Three, and certainly not least: Brass didn’t grab the
interstellar show Pink Floyd was doing at dawn.
Of course, Tinto Brass was shooting the end scenes of his movie at the
Ally Pally. These scenes had to be perfect and couldn’t be repeated on
another day. He probably didn’t have the time to chase celebrities or
record rock bands.
Col Cuore In Gola is a roller coaster, fun while it lasts and rapidly
forgotten afterwards.
Soundtrack of Nerosubianco by Freedom.
Movie two: Nerosubianco
Tinto Brass made four Swinging London movies in total.
Nerosubianco
(Attraction, Black on White) is Brass’ second summer of love film,
starring Swedish actress Anita
Sanders (as Barbara), who mainly played in Italian movies. It tells
the story of an upper-class woman who starts daydreaming when she sees
an attractive African American man (Terry
Carter). Reality and dreams interconnect. The viewer has to guess
what is real and what is fantasy.
The movie revolves primarily around the music of Freedom,
who can be seen performing in several scenes. Freedom was a Procol
Harum spin-off when two of its members were kicked out by Gary
Brooker, just after A
Whiter Shade Of Pale was released. Freedom evolved into a
short-lived hard-rock band, but for this soundtrack, they used a more
default psychedelic approach.
Just like in CCIG, a lot of scenes have been taken by candid cameras;
the actors visit Hyde
Park, Woburn
Abbey, galleries, and shops, and witness underground happenings.
Iggy the Eskimo fun fact #2: Iggy visited the first Woburn Abbey
festival, in 1967, where her picture was taken, perhaps by photographer
Feri Lukas. More info on this blog: Iggy
- another festival, another look.
Anita Sanders in front of the Early Bird boutique. The Roundhouse
One scene has Barbara visiting The
Roundhouse, where she watches a Mark
Boyle light show, probably the only cinematographic evidence of his
‘Son et Lumière for Bodily Functions and Fluids’.
Pink Floyd fun fact #6: Mark Boyle, described by Mark Blake as
the UFO’s in-house lighting wizard, had been a regular at Mike Leonard’s
sound and light workshop at Hornsey
College of Art (P68-69). Pink Floyd played The Roundhouse on October
15, 1966, for the International Times launch and lived at Leonard’s
house for a while.
Nerosubianco, with its depiction of London during the summer of love,
could be legitimately regarded as part of the cinematic canon of work
associated with Pink Floyd and The
Soft Machine, concludes Simon Matthews (P133-134).
It is a psychedelic trip with groovy music, cows on a couch, and a
kaleidoscopic attack on your eyes and mind. The movie ends with the band
Freedom running towards the horizon, in BeatlesHelp
style, chased by the film crew.
L'Urlo.
Movie three: L’Urlo
Tinto Brass refused an offer to direct A
Clockwork Orange (more or less, it’s a complicated story) and asked
would-be erotic kitten Tina
Aumont (as Anita) to star in L’Urlo
(The Howl, The Shriek). The shooting began in September 1968.
A tagline description of this film could be: Nude hippies chased by the
police.
One of the first scenes shows Anita taking a shower after she has been
arrested for participating in a Grosvenor
Square demonstration against the Vietnam
War. It is suggested that the police raped her. She runs away on her
wedding day and ends up in a hotel that seems to be an elaborate sex
dungeon. Spike
Hawkins' Three Army Poem is shown for less than a second.
Syd Barrett fun fact #1: Rob Chapman, author of the Syd Barrett
biography A Very Irregular Head, found out that Beatnik and poet Spike
Hawkins was an acquaintance of Syd Barrett. He was interviewing Pete
Brown for his book, and when the interview was over, he remarked
that some Barrett lyrics had a distinct Spike Hawkins style. At that
point, Pete Brown remarked: "I think Spike Hawkins knew Syd Barrett."
The two artists not only knew but also met, each other on different
occasions, although it was probably more a Mandrax haze that tied them
together than the urge to produce some art.
Tina Aumont driving without seatbelts.
Anita walks into a tunnel where we have Pete Brown and his Battered
Ornaments performing in front of a bunch of nude hippies (but without
the actual sound). Anita ends up on an island with a toothless lion and
flees, once again, but now in a sports car. She crashes the car. She
dies. The End.
A cool description of the film can be found on IMDB by NateManD.
Take some Fellini, add some Jodorowsky/Arrabal and a little tablespoon
of Godard for an extra kick, stir and you got yourself "L'Urlo". One
crazy psychedelic, surrealist anti-war art orgy. A bus is lit on fire!
Hippies are chased by riot cops. There's stock footage of Vietnam and
other wars with a machine gun showdown! S&M, slapstick sexuality, a
man's pursuit of a beautiful lady... abstract art and nudity galore!
(.../…) This film is pure punk rock before punk even existed.
Dropout.
Movie four: Dropout
L’Urlo had big problems being distributed, it was censored in Italy, and
several cuts had to be made, with less and less nudity. On a private
screening, Brass showed his cut to Vanessa
Redgrave, and Franco
Nero. They were impressed.
After some work on Barbarella
Goes Down, a movie that would never see the light of day, Brass
started Dropout,
a film that was self-financed and shot on 16 mm to cut expenses. The
plot is a variation on Nerosubianco and LUrlo, with a woman (Vanessa
Redgrave as Mary) meeting a man (Franco Nero as Bruno) who shows her an
alternative way of life by meeting some society dropouts: unemployed,
drug addicts, drag queens, alcoholics, and anarchists.
While Mary and Bruno run around London (a recurring theme for Brass,
apparently), sometimes interrupted by the police (another recurring
theme), they end up at the SPACE gallery at St
Katharine Docks. There, some sculptures from the Dutch sculptor Herman
Makkink can be seen, including the Rocking
Machine, which is used as an infamous murder weapon in Kubrick’s A
Clockwork Orange. Although Brass was involved in an early version of A
Clockwork Orange, it is probably just a coincidence that both movies
have the same sculpture.
Scottish band Middle
of the Road recorded two songs for Dropout before their rise to fame
had begun. The Sun Is Shining sounds like a leftover from when the band
was a Latin American outfit named Las Caracas. The second song, Do Not
Cry, is an ode to Sacco
and Vanzetti and miles away from the bubble gum pop that made them
world famous.
Pink Floyd fun fact #8: Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine would use
the warehouses at St. Katharine Docks for rehearsals (P203).
While the first three films can be easily obtained in these days of
internet piracy, Dropout only exists in a bad copy, taken from Italian
television, and in the hands of collectors only.
Tina Aumont and uncredited Lion.
Conclusion
I must say I wasn't that interested at first in a biography of an
Italian filmmaker who happened to do a few movies in London in the
sixties. But Simon Matthews weaves a web around the story of Tinto
Brass, adding dozens of links with people and organisations from the
underground, the avant-garde, the rock scene, and the movie world. (Just
like Julian Palacios did in Dark Globe, but around Syd Barrett
and the early Floyd.)
In that aspect, it is much more than a Tinto Brass biography. Just like
the title predicts, it gives an overview of ‘swinging London and the 60s
pop culture scene’, through the cinematographic lens of Giovanni Brass.
People who have read some of my reviews know that I am a sucker for
footnotes (Men
On The Border is mentioned in one of those) and that I can’t resist
a bulky index. Free Your Mind! has a 23-page index, making it a joy to
jump from page to page.
Free Your Mind! is the kind of book I like to read.
Mark Boyle op-art as used in Nerosubianco. Tinto
Brass cameo in Nerosubianco.
Anoraky Epilogue
Col Cuore In Gola and Nerosubianco are late sixties pop-art
extravaganzas, with all the joys but also the flaws of the underground
and avant-garde movies of that era. L’Urlo is fun, throwing in some
boobs every ten minutes, but from a historical perspective, it's less
interesting.
Luckily, there is Matthews’ book to guide the uninitiated viewer through
the many relics of Swinging London that show up in these Tinto Brass
films, and there are a lot.
Matthews, Simon: Free Your Mind! Giovanni 'Tinto' Brass 'Swinging
London' and the 60s Pop Culture Scene, Oldcastle Books, Harpenden,
UK, 2023, 288 pages.
Many thanks to: Simon Matthews, RJBuffalo. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Over the years, I have acquired a few too many Hipgnosis
photo books, starting with Storm
Thorgerson’s Walk Away Renée and ending with Aubrey
Powell’s Hipgnosis Portraits (simply named Hipgnosis in
the French edition, which has an extra boobylicious picture
because French will be French). I may even have skipped a few, as they
all have the same pictures and roughly the same text.
In 2022, Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell wrote an interesting (and funny)
autobiography that was reviewed here as well: Through The Prism.
(See: Cows, Pigs,
Sheep...) This was followed by an ‘authorised story of Hipgnosis’, Us
and Them, written by Mark
Blake, that gave more saucy details about the Hipgnosis trio. (See: Un
Orage Postmoderne) In between those two, a Hipgnosis documentary saw
the light of day, Squaring The Circle, by Anton
Corbijn. It was shown at a few movie festivals and streamed on
several channels, but a physical release could not be found. Until now,
although, at the time of writing, it can only be found on Amazon UK,
where they have a ‘Collector’s Edition’ version. Probably it’s called
that way because it has a DVD and a Blu-ray with the same content.
Squaring the Circle.
Squaring the Circle
The movie starts with Po Powell walking through an old cemetery,
carrying a huge carton folder on his back. Apparently, it is the same
portfolio Hipgnosis used in the sixties. It is a powerful scene,
obviously augmented when Shine
On You Crazy Diamond chimes in. I know it is a cinematographic trick
to make our eyes water, but it is damn effective.
Po sits down, opens the folder, and shows us several iconic images: Peter
Gabriel, 10CC,
Pink
Floyd (three different ones)...
The first talking head is, weirdly enough, the nincompoop known as Noel
Gallagher, but it has to be said that his interventions are cool and
to the point. He has aged gracefully.
Starting in Cambridge in 1964, Po tells us how he met Storm, who would
soon become his blood brother. David
Gilmour and Roger
Waters comment that Storm was the leader of a bohemian pack of
hipsters who listened to jazz, smoking joints.
Storm Thorgerson gets some words in as well, not fully grasping why some
people think he has an ego the size of a small planet. These archival
snippets have been shown before, in Roddy
Bogawa’s Taken By Storm, but more of that if you keep
on reading.
Storm teaches Po how to become a photographer, a trade that is,
according to Po, close to alchemy.
The documentary jumps to the first Hipgnosis album sleeve, A
Saucerful of Secrets. It tries to emulate a space rock kaleidoscopic
drug experience of sorts. (Actually, the duo did some book covers
before, but that isn’t mentioned.)
The name Hipgnosis came from Syd
Barrett, says Po, although other witnesses deny that and give the
honour to Dave Henderson or Adrian Haggard. It will be forever shrouded
in mystery.
LSD
changed a lot, and Po testifies how Syd reacted: "There was a fear that
emanated from him." Storm and Po also witnessed the dark side of LSD,
and they both needed therapy to get rid of the spectres haunting their
brains.
The movie has been going on for about 20 minutes, and all they have been
talking about is the Cambridge mafia connection between Hipgnosis and
Pink Floyd. But then the subject broadens.
Pink Floyd Secrets.
This is a release suited for minors aged 15 and older, and as such, it
tends to go soft on certain subjects. An example is the snippet of the
archive video of the Edgar
Broughton Band slaughterhouse sleeve,
which shows more (male) buttocks in the Bogawa documentary than in
Corbijn’s version.
There is the anecdote that Jill
Furmanovsky was hired by Storm because she had nice tits, and
obviously, that doesn’t make the Squaring the Circle final cut either.
It was no secret that Storm liked the female body, and several of his
Hipgnosis sleeves show that, not always in good taste.
The ‘We piss in the sink’ story does pass the censor; apparently that
one was too good not to mention.
The tipping point of Hipgnosis was not Lulubelle
the Third — sorry to disappoint you, fellow Pink Floyd fans — but
1971’s Elegy
from The
Nice. Suddenly, Storm and Po realised you could put a piece of land
art on a sleeve and sell it as an album cover. This culminated in 1973
when Hipgnosis became the go-to studio: Band
on the Run, Houses
of the Holy, and The
Dark Side of The Moon.
By the mid-seventies, money is gushing in and Po travels around the
world. In a shot that takes a split second, we see some lines of white
powder on a mirror. It is the only suggestion that something was going
wrong with them.
Peter
Christopherson, the third Hipgnosis partner, brought an element of
darkness to Hipgnosis. He had a music career as well, joining Throbbing
Gristle and starting Coil
and Psychic
TV. Apart from that, not much is revealed about him in this
documentary. Most of it isn’t suited for minors anyway. For one thing,
he was aware of the changes in the music industry with punk, après-punk,
and the birth of MTV.
In the early eighties, Storm and Peter believe there is no future in
record sleeves any more, and they decide to start a music video company (Greenback
Films). Po reluctantly joins them. In Po’s words, this made Storm
think he was the master of the universe. He was always going over
budget, making the company bankrupt in a couple of years.
Po Powell breaks down when he talks about the Hipgnosis collapse and
their lost friendship. It is a powerful image, and putting Wish
You Were Here on top of that adds to the sentiment. The screen turns
black.
After the message that Storm died in 2013, the camera points back to Po,
still crying over the death of his friend. In my opinion, Anton Corbijn
crosses a voyeuristic line there. Chasing for cheap sentiment.
The epilogue has Po, with the carton portfolio on his back, walking
towards the horizon, carrying the weight of the world. One of the best
documentaries I have ever seen, with a more than excellent soundtrack.
One point of criticism, though. Squaring The Circle has one of the most
underwhelming extras I have ever witnessed, consisting of a superfluous
slideshow of merely 20 ‘iconic’ Hipgnosis covers. That's why we will
give you a special feature at the bottom of this page.
Taken by Storm.
Taken by Storm
Taken by Storm is a 2015 documentary by Roddy Bogawa. It takes off where
Squaring the Circle ended, with Thorgerson’s photoshoot for Pink Floyd’s A
Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987).
This documentary isn’t as streamlined as the über-slick Squaring the
Circle and has a ‘home movie’ vibe all over it. It uses a lot of
archival material and impromptu interviews with Storm. The interesting
thing is that it also has a healthy interest in Storm’s projects after
Hipgnosis, with interviews of musicians of the post-2000 era.
As usual in these documentaries, there are a bunch of talking heads
telling us what a genius Storm was. There is diversity among the guests
from both documentaries, which is a good thing.
After a 15-minute introduction with Thorgerson’s later work, the
documentary jumps to Cambridge in the sixties, with Storm and Roger
Waters playing on the same rugby team. It starts the story of Hipgnosis,
as told by Storm and Po. This time Po does mention that Hipgnosis
started by making pictures for book covers, but of course, it doesn’t
take long before he turns to A Saucerful of Secrets. It is noteworthy
that Po doesn’t link Syd Barrett with the Hipgnosis name this time. It’s
just a name they found on the front door.
Atom Heart Mother gets mentioned, as does Elegy, as a pivotal point in
Hipgnosis’ career. Then it’s up to Led Zep and Houses of the Holy. Storm
and Po talk about the philosophy behind their record covers while
Squaring the Circle is more anecdotal.
The Animals
debacle (or publicity triumph, if you will) gets mentioned, this time by
Storm. This isn’t a chronological overview. The Dark Side of the Moon
gets mentioned after Animals, and it takes them half a minute to get rid
of it. Then the documentary wooshes back two years earlier to the Edgar
Broughton Band, and this time we do get to see the model’s buttocks.
Taken by Storm CD.
Storm starts a hypocritical, poor artist’s sermon by saying how he never
made money out of his work. From the Mark Blake biography, however, we
know that Po bought a villa with a swimming pool and a speedboat in
Florida. Storm was not only the last living surrealist, to quote David
Gilmour, but he could also be quite surreal in his testimonies before a
camera.
The Sex
Pistols used to have a rehearsal studio next to the Hipgnosis
offices. The long-haired hippies slowly started to understand there was
a musical revolution in the air, especially when the Pistols came in
wearing their I Hate Pink Floyd t-shirts.
After a sabbatical, a music video company sees the light of day:
Greenback. Storm and Po get the chance to make a video for a new artist,
whose Wherever
I Lay My Hat reaches the top of the charts. Suddenly, they are
recognised as the movie company for the stars. Within two years, they
turn over 6 million dollars a year, according to Po. Storm has the
opposite opinion: "It was totally disastrous" and tries to blame the
others.
A Barry
Gibb movie (Now
Voyager) goes so over budget that it drowns the company. Po and
Storm separate and won’t speak to each other for 12 years.
This is where Squaring the Circle stops, but Taken by Storm continues
with Thorgerson’s solo adventures. Storm’s initial rescue lies in the
fact that Pink Floyd does a Waters-less comeback and they want the
Hipgnosis grandeur back. The documentary turns to the many
post-Hipgnosis record sleeves and has interviews with collaborators,
musicians, and even a psychoanalyst.
In 2003, Storm suffers a stroke in Paris. Nobody admits this happened
while supervising a Pink Floyd exhibition. During his recovery, he
manages to bring up an idea for a Mars
Voltacover
that comes out of his situation.
In the last quarter of the documentary, an EMI manager says cover art
will be pushed away, not realising that there will be a vinyl
renaissance. It’s the proof that record people haven’t got a single idea
what they are talking about.
Storm by Roddy Bogawa.
An Epic Epilogue
Squaring the Circle is a film about Hipgnosis, narrated by Aubrey ‘Po’
Powell. Taken by Storm is a film about Thorgerson's magic, narrated by
Storm. As such, they are complementary.
One of the things I noted is that people have aged a lot between these
two documentaries. It’s the Mortality Sequence all over again. Watch
them both, if you can.
Guest List
For those who kick on those things, here is a list of the talking heads
in both documentaries. It shows that both have an exclusive list of
guests. How many of these people do you know? TBS = Taken By Storm,
STC = Squaring The Circle.
Name
TBS
STC
Adrian Shaughnessy (TBS)
⚛
Alan Parsons (TBS)
⚛
Alex Henderson (STC)
⚛
Alex Wall (TBS)
⚛
Andrew Ellis (STC)
⚛
Aubrey Powell (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Carinthia West (STC)
⚛
Cedric Bixler Zavala (TBS)
⚛
Damien Hirst (TBS)
⚛
Dan Abbott (TBS)
⚛
David Gale (STC)
⚛
David Gilmour (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Dominic Howard (TBS)
⚛
Fergal Lawler (TBS)
⚛
George Hardie (STC)
⚛
Glen Matlock (STC)
⚛
Graham Gouldman (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Humphrey Ocean (STC)
⚛
James Johnston (TBS)
⚛
James Roberts (TBS)
⚛
Jennifer Ivory (TBS)
⚛
Jenny Lesmoir-Gordon (STC)
⚛
Jill Furmanovsky (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Jimmy Page (STC)
⚛
John Woods (TBS)
⚛
Josh Cheuse (TBS)
⚛
Merck Mercuriadis (STC)
⚛
Mirelle Davis (TBS)
⚛
Nick Mason (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Noel Hogan (TBS)
⚛
Paul Fletcher (TBS)
⚛
Paul McCartney (STC)
⚛
Paul Rappaport (TBS)
⚛
Peter Blake (TBS)
⚛
Peter Curzon (TBS)
⚛
Peter Gabriel (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Peter Saville (STC)
⚛
Richard Evans (STC)
⚛
Richard Manning (STC)
⚛
Rob Dickinson (TBS)
⚛
Robert Plant (TBS, STC)
⚛
⚛
Roger Dean (STC)
⚛
Roger Waters (STC)
⚛
Rupert Truman (TBS)
⚛
Simon Neil (TBS)
⚛
Steve Miller (TBS)
⚛
Tony May (TBS)
⚛
Special feature: Hipgnosis Covers with a Pig
Pictures taken from the (deleted) 'Records My Cat Destroyed' Tumblr. No
pigs were harmed during these photo sessions.
In 2002, a Scotsman with a UFO,
sorry UAP, fixation logged into a bunch of military and NASA computers.
This was, in the words of American justice, ‘the biggest military
computer hack of all time’. The United States asked Great Britain for
his extradition. In America, the chance existed that he would be
sentenced to seventy years in prison, not a bright-looking future for a
man in his thirties.
It took Gary
McKinnon over a decade to win his fight with American (and British)
justice, and during that period, several support events were held to
help him (financially) with his battle.
David Gilmour recorded a charity single for McKinnon, a cover of
Graham Nash’s Chicago.
Chrissie Hynde saves the song, and it would have been excellent without
Geldof's or Gilmour's vocals. It’s a bit of an uncoordinated mess and
not something to be particularly proud of.
Youth Remix
Producer Youth (Martin Glover) was asked to make a remix of the
track, and David Gilmour recorded some uninspired guitar licks at
Youth’s studio. It was then that Youth got the luminous idea of turning
the song into an album. And not just any album, but an Orb album. Youth
has been a friend (and business partner) of Orb founder LX Paterson
since his Killing Joke days.
After some hesitations, David Gilmour agreed on the album, and Metallic
Spheres was released in October 2010. Although an Orb album in name,
it is my opinion that Alex Paterson’s influence was minimal, or at least
not as inspired as on other Orb releases. To quote another fan:
The original was such a letdown. On paper, it sounded like a dream
collaboration; on wax, it sounded like an afternoon jam session of ideas
all chucked together to be worked on later. (Mark Lawton @ Facebook.)
Metallic Spheres in Colour
This year, a remix of the album was announced, called Metallic
Spheres in Colour. For Pink Floyd buffs, this is not a remix in the
Floydian tradition where albums like Animals and A Momentary Lapse get a
much-needed cleaning up. It is a remix in the Orbian tradition where, if
you have some luck, a snippet of the original release can be recognised.
In other words, this is a completely new album; it is brilliant, and the
fact that it has even less Gilmour than before has all to do with it.
Part one, Seamless Solar Spheres of Affection, is a great
re-interpretation of the source material.
Part two, Seamlessly Martian Spheres of Reflection, is the kind
of ambient The Orb premiered in the late eighties. If you are into this
kind of music, you are in for a treat; otherwise, it will pester you
like a lingering toothache.
Kind of a funny remark for the dorks amongst us. The first Metallic
Spheres was issued as The Orb featuring David Gilmour; the 2023
remix changed that to The Orb and David Gilmour. (There is also a
promo CD with the politically incorrect The Orb vs. Dave Gilmour,
which really must have angered good old Fred.)
DSOTM - 50 years.
Colour me Dark
What is this rubbish? What does Pink Floyd think we’re thinking? Why
release a fifth CD remaster of Dark Side of the Moon that sounds
identical to all others? To quote Ramenastern:
Wikipedia lists: 1979 remastered Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, 1992 Shine
On Remaster (also released as standalone in 1993), 2003 30th anniversary
remaster, 2011 remaster, 2023 remaster. So that's five now. That's
not including multichannel masters and mixes. (Ramenastern @ Reddit.)
The Dark Side of the Moon is no fucking Dash washing powder, is it?
Sounding whiter than white...
Check out this summary by NO TIME TO ROCK: Is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of
the Moon a TIMELESS CLASSIC or is it PLAYED OUT?
That there is a slight communication problem between Roger Waters
and David Gilmour is a well-known fact. When he first announced he was
going to reimagine Floyd’s 1973 masterpiece with the wisdom of an
80-year-old, most people thought he had finally become bonkers.
The Dark Side of the Moon Redux is partially a spoken word album,
basically replacing the instrumental parts with long-winding, not always
coherent, ramblings. This is not the first time Waters surprised us with
a spoken word record. The 2004 single To Kill the Child/Leaving Beirut
foreshadowed that. I don’t remember that single as being particularly
memorable.
What to think about it all? The Redux floats between the brilliant (Us
and Them) and the slightly exhausting (Money). The hits, so to speak,
are beautifully rendered with minimalistic instrumentation and with a
Tom Waits-like raspy voice. I imagine Roger Waters sitting behind a
piano in a cocktail bar, while Polly Samson is sipping from a
daiquiri and yapping loudly to drown out the music. In other tracks, it
feels like Waters is his own tribute band, mimicking the jazz-lounge
tunes of Air covering Pink Floyd.
It’s the kind of experiment only Waters can accomplish, but I guess once
is enough. Nobody will ask for a spoken word record of Wish You Were
Here. He would be capable of reciting his shopping lists over the
instrumental Shine On parts.
As a Pink Floyd fan who only listens to Dark Side once in a blue moon,
this is an essential record to have, but not really to listen to
regularly. I’ll stack it next to the Ca Ira opera and the spoken word
(again!) rendition of Stravinsky’s The Soldier Tale.
Wet Dream Remix.
Colour me Blue
Pink Floyd über-fans are such an elitist lot. I know I’m one of those as
well. But I don’t understand why some of them loathe the solo records
because they don’t have the same standards as the three, four, or five
Pink Floyd big ones. (I even like the Mason + Fenn album Profiles.)
One of those is Rick Wright’s Wet Dream, which appeared in 1978.
It went nearly unnoticed when it was released, but my favourite rock
radio show (in Belgium) gave it plenty of airplay, often coupled with
Gilmour’s first from that same year.
Zee is regarded as cult nowadays (see our review at: Are
friends Zeelectric?) and Wet Dream has been heading the same way. I
always found Wet Dream a fine album, with its scarcely hidden
Shine-On-You-Crazy-Diamond-ish style and mood. It probably is my most
liked (and certainly most played) solo album from the boys.
Just take the opener, Mediterranean C, for instance. This is Floyd pur
sang and would have found its rightful place on Wish You Were Here or
the slightly underrated Obscured by Clouds.
Cat Cruise is 33 seconds longer than in the original version; Waves even
52 seconds. The album follows the path of Gilmour’s first, which was
also about a minute and a half longer in its remastered version.
The Steven Wilson remix, as about everybody agrees on, is pretty
terrific, giving the instruments more place without destroying the
original mood of the album.
Get it and enjoy this forgotten album. It might grow into a classic.
Wet Dream Blu-ray menu.
Blu-ray version (Update: 2023 12 16)
After having travelled by carrier pigeons all over the entire world, the
Blu-ray version of Wet Dream finally arrived at Atagong Mansion. It
contains several superfluous postcards and a 10-page fold-out leaflet
with some new pictures and the original cover art. By the way, do you
know who the nipple belongs to that can be seen on that Hipgnosis cover?
(Answer at the bottom of this post.)
The Blu-ray has the album in a 2023 Dolby Atmos mix, a 5.1 surround mix,
and a 24-bit high-res stereo mix. All mixes that make audiophiles go
crazy, but frankly, I can’t be bothered. But - what a nice surprise - it
also contains the original 1978 stereo version.
The other extras are instrumental versions of the four tracks with
lyrics. These are the songs with the vocals stripped off, and as such,
they sound a bit meagre and repetitive. It’s somewhat interesting for
anoraks but doesn’t add to Wright’s legacy - quite the contrary.
Scene from Remember a Day.
Remember A Day
This isn’t the first time a Rick Wright song got the ‘instrumental’
treatment. In the 2000 bio-hysterical movie Remember
A Day, which every Syd fan should at least watch once, not for its
cinematographic merits but for its abundance of Floydian cameos, the
credits have an instrumental version of Rick’s Remember A Day song.
That version was initially promoted as a rare alternative take of the
Rick Wright song. Fans soon found out that it was merely a remix of the
song, with the instrumental parts stitched together and the sung parts
left out. You can listen to it here: Remember
A Day.
The Wet Dream Blu-ray also has a pretty nice photo gallery and a couple
of home videos with the surprise appearance of a certain Pink Floyd
guitarist.
The Nipple Theory
To answer the question above, the model on the Wet Dream original
artwork was Aubrey 'Po' Powell’s partner Gabi Schneider. This titbit was
revealed by journalist Mark Blake, who wrote the biographies Pigs
Might Fly and Us and Them. Gabi can also be seen on the back
covers of 10CC’s Bloody Tourists and Wishbone Ash’s Front Page News.
Many thanks to: Mark Blake, Mark Lawton, NO TIME TO ROCK, Ramenastern. ♥
Iggy ♥ Libby ♥