Tag: Syd Barrett

Almost There

It’s 2:15pm. Lunch is about to end (I started my break a little later than normal today). I have a vacation day booked for tomorrow, then the following two days are off for Thanksgiving, then the weekend. That’s right, folks. I have a five day weekend coming and it is just a bit more than three hours away. I have one more meeting on my schedule this afternoon and I have a few email threads that need updating. Other than that, we’re just riding out this fine Tuesday in the office.

87/365

So before Covid shut everything down I was a regular user of Audible, the audiobook subscription service. I forget how but at some point I came into a whole bunch of credits and blew them all on a number of books that I never got around to listening to. Back in March when my company upped our in-the-office requirement from once a week to twice a week I reopened my account and all of those unread books were still there. One was a biography of Syd Barrett. I’m listening to it now and while many of the events and facts the author describes are clearly incorrect, and many others are trying to show Barrett as some poetic legend on a level that is infinitely greater than his catalog demonstrates, it is a good read. I have been listening to a lot of his music over the last week.

The National Solo Album Month (nasoalmo) rules allow for one cover song. While adding another song does not fit my personal theme for this month’s project, I am wondering if I should record a cover of Dominoes. I’m thinking about it.

Patches Doesn’t Dig Pink Floyd

I’m feeling a little blue today. Fathers Day often has that effect on me. I always feel like an imposter. It’s not right or wrong and I don’t want to debate it, it’s just the way it is. It’s okay.

Harry cleaned his room today and Jen shuffled around some computer equipment. Harry’s back at his father’s now, given the day I believe that’s the right thing to do even though I always want him here with us, and Jen was wrapping up her desk set up. She asked me to carry something into Bellana’s room for safe keeping, and she also said something about a mouse. She was referring to the personal computer peripheral input device but it instantly put a completely unrelated song into my head.

Patches was curled up in a ball on Bellana’s bed. I performed a dramatic poetry reading of the song lyrics in the hopes that it would cheer both me and her up a little…

I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house,
I don’t know why I call him Gerald.
He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse.

Patches just sat there looking at me. No response at all. I don’t think she really gets Syd Barrett.

Syd Barrett’s Last Session

I’m not sure why I find myself diving back into Syd Barrett’s music again. It’s something I’m drawn toward every now and then and it’s alway’s painful. His music from mid-1967 on is just so tragic.

You have two singles and an album from Pink Floyd that are magic and then a few singles and unreleased (then) songs before they kicked him out. Then the two solo albums, an outtake collection and a smattering of previously unreleased things that are simply tragic in their lack of focus. Some of the post-acid-or-whatever-happened-to-him songs are still brilliant (Vegetable Man, Jugband Blues, Octopus, and Dominoes) but most of it is pitiable in an imagine-what-could-have-been sense.

We all knew there was an attempt at a third album in 1974 that died after a single session. After that we know he showed up to a Floyd session in ‘75 and no one recognized him, but that was it. Now thanks to the wonders of bootlegging and YouTube we can hear that ‘74 session and it is just as lost as we’d been lead to believe.

For starters, let’s just assume that this is what it claims to be. Who know if it is, right? Let’s just go with it.

This is the sound of someone who didn’t have a clue what to do with himself, noodling out ideas that were mostly just 12-bar blues riffs. It’s heartbreaking to listen to but at the same time it’s light years better than I expected it to be. Knowing this was out there, I always wondered why they didn’t include any of it on the Opel compilation. Now I know why. There is nothing useable here.

Lately I’ve been hearing about rumors of additional lost recordings. There’s a documentary where Joe Boyd says he had, and lost, a tape of Syd playing songs that likely ended up on his solo records. This was before the mental breakdown. Syd told him he had a pile of songs Floyd didn’t use and Boyd asked for a tape thinking he could give some songs to another band he was producing.

Also, David Gilmour’s ex-wife is said to have remembered Syd coming to their house and using David’s home studio. She recalled the timing being well after Syd’s final album and his very short lived band, Stars, but well before the final session in ‘74. The mind boggles at the thought of what he might have had in his head at that time.

Anyway, listening to this recording makes me sad for what could have been, but also happy for what was. Go give Astronomy Domine or See Emily Play a spin and bask in his very fleeting musical glory.

The Great Conjunction

We are hoping we’ll be able to see The Great Conjunction tonight. If we do, I won’t have my Nikon with me. It’s in the closet that Santa used to stash the gifts he got for me, so it’s off limits (hehehe). It isn’t going to matter though, I don’t think. The two planets are hanging out in the South Western sky and we have cloud cover in that direction. I went out about half an hour ago to see if there was anything viewable. Even without the clouds, they would have been hidden behind the trees. We’ll try again after work (about half an hour from now) and if need be we might drive to another location. A park or a field or something. Someplace reasonably close that doesn’t have all the trees or the sick light pollution that we have in our neighborhood.

In closing, here is Astronomy Domine by The Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett knew this thing was coming all the way back in 1967…

Lime and limpid green, a second scene
Now fights between the blue you once knew
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania
Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten