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| That good time band, Pink Floyd! |
I don't give a crap about Syd Barrett. I never have, and I never will. I think the music Pink Floyd recorded with him, save for a couple of tracks was nothing comparable to what they did after her fried his brain with acid and was booted from the group. And rightly so. Who would want to be dragged down by someone who can't get their shit together when there are untold fortunes to be reaped? So all the fans can go and and keep clamoring about his "mad genius" and all. You can keep it. Dave Gilmour knew how to rock and that was that.
Of course, my vote for fave Pink Floyd album is one that the band itself hates. Ranks it right down there with
Ummagumma. Now, I dig the live portion of that album, but I'm fully with the Floyd in dismissing the studio half as crap. But really, I'm not sure if any other band at the time had as an interesting a trajectory to superstardom the way Pink Floyd had, what with the personnel changes, oddball movie soundtracks and general finding themselves. It's true that Syd had a huge influence on them and left them at a loss as to what to do after his ousting, but nonetheless it made for interesting listening.
But my pick for favorite Floyd LP is the very first one I ever heard. Once again, I was a young kid, and I can't recall if I was in school yet or not. If I was, it had to have only been kindergarten or first grade. Anyway, I would often beg my older brother to give me any albums he no longer wanted as I got tired of listening to my kiddie records pretty quickly and wanted some real music.
So one day he hands me
Atom Heart Mother.
It had a lovely cow on the front, and a few more on the back. You opened it up and there was a black and white picture of more cows in a pasture. I read the song titles. I saw that the first side was just a big piece and had portions titled "Breast Milky" and "Funky Dung." Even at that age, I knew what that all meant, so it seemed like it was going to be weird.
I recall dropping the needle on it for the first time and distinctly thinking that it sounded like some kind of outer space music. Indeed, I wound up taping the album and taking it outside to the back yard where my swingset was. I played it as I swung about, listening to the "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and pretending that I was on some spaceship exploring the galaxies.
Funny how I learned later when I officially "got into" the band that some of what they did was indeed termed "space rock."
I enjoyed the second side of songs as well, especially Rick Wright's "Summer '68." I found the weirdo sounds of the faceless man scarfing his cereal like a pig on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" to be repulsive and funny. It was an album I would regularly spin.
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| The think tank thinking it over. |
But after a while I sort of forgot about it, and it wasn't until that I became enamored with everything Pink Floyd via
Dark Side of the Moon in my teen years that I revisited it. At that point, I found that I really loved Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun," which seemed to strike some deep resonance in me at age 16. So again I thought this was pretty wonderful yet was always surprised to read that the band members hated it. Apparently they thought it was recorded "in a rush" and that it didn't really work. But I always thought it was groovy. I still do. I'll take the suite any day over
Meddle's "Echoes," too.
At any rate, Pink Floyd may have wound up making albums after
Atom Heart Mother that they liked more, or sold in the zillions, or were technically cooler, but I'll always have a soft spot for those damned cows. As a final note, I also remember feeling really weird the first time I heard Roger Waters sing the line "If I go insane, please don't put your wires in my brain." Yeah, they never did get away from Syd, did they?
