Possibly forgotten, I brought up Syd Barrett’s album, “Barrett” today in another thread. I was wondering how many people had bought any of his solo work. So a poll.
0 voters
BTW: Syd Barrett was
the founding member of Pink Floyd who became too erratic and missed many or most live dates and was effectively replaced by David Gilmour. Sadly he had some serious mental issues.
Before I saw your post, I was only vaguely aware he did some solo project of some sort. Had no idea it sounded like that.
Yes. I have the Syd Barrett “Crazy Diamond” box set with 3 studio albums and outtakes. When I saw it in a store, they only had it in CD format, and I didn’t even have a CD player at the time because I was satisfied with the sound of tapes. (I still am, although CDs were better for most purposes due to skipability and toughness.) So I actually bought a CD player just to listen to Syd Barrett.
I think only die-hard Pink Floyd fans are really aware of him. The group of people that have pretty much ever Pink Floyd album. There are probably some older English fans of Floyd before they made it big that remember him, but few in North America I would think except for the mentioned die-hard fans.
I have his 3 CDs (2 were discount bin).
I have The Madcap Laughs, Melk Weg, and He Who Laughs First
I was a hardcore Floyd completist in my youth, so of course I had this.
But I realized at some point that I no longer had it, that it had been misplaced (lost? lent out and forgotten? stolen?) somewhere during the previous years, and I’d never listened to it enough to make it worthwhile to replace.
Edit to add: Listening to it now. Man, what a flashback.
Odd. I consider myself a pretty big Floyd fan, and am well aware of who Syd Barrett was. I used to own “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and can hear “See Emily Play” playing in my head right now.
Emily tries, but misunderstands (ah-ooooh)
She’s often inclined to borrow somebody’s dreams till tomorrow…
But I don’t think I was aware that he had published solo work. Or if I ever was, I since forgot. I’ve vaguely heard of “The Madcap Laughs” but if anybody had asked me who that was, I probably would have said Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.
Got me some catch-up listening to do!
I owned (never replaced many cassettes) most of Pink Floyd’s studio catalog and know who Syd Barrett is but I never really preferred the early stuff so never picked up his solo work.
I only knew that he had currently-released solo stuff because I was on a Pink Floyd mailing list in the 90s and they were talking about the box set release. I may have vaguely heard of solo stuff from reading the Floyd book Saucerful of Secrets, but I may have confused it with his unreleased Floyd stuff like Scream Thy Last Scream and had assumed that it wasn’t available.
Nah, I had friends who owned them and heard them that way. Didn’t love them enough to get my own copies.
Many years ago, while browsing through a record store, I saw and bought a two-LP release of Barrett and The Madcap Laughs. I’m not sure I played it more than once. I remember the impression I got, though. It would be hard for me to imagine it being in very many people’s rotation of music they play regularly. It struck me as more like the kind of thing you might dig out of the back of your closet after saying to your friends, “Hey, check this out,” not expecting anyone to want to hear more than one side, if that. (“Yeah, okay, dirtball. We get the idea. Now get that off of there and put on Wish You Were Here.”)
I was never a huge Pink Floyd fan, but i remember borrowing a Syd Barrett
album from a friend. I don’t remember anything about it except 1 track was
about an effervescing elephant !
I have The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.
With tiny eyes and great big trunk.
Huh. Im apparently the only poster so far who didn’t even know he had a solo career (well, outside of two others who didn’t know who he was.)
I have been a big Pink Floyd fan for a long time and had all their albums on LP around 1987. A short time later I bought “The Madcap Laughs” as one of my first CDs. I haven’t listened to it for a long time and it didn’t make me want to buy the rest of his solo output. The album sounds more like a demo tape than a fully produced album, although some members of Floyd helped out with the recording (I don’t remember exactly who, but at least Gilmour definitely plays on Barrett’s solo records). It was a kind of letdown in comparison to the usually perfectly produced Floyd albums.
You really couldn’t call it a “career”, Barrett already was greatly affected by mental illness so that he was unable to deliver his best like on “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”, and his solo work commercially (and arguably also artistically) went nowhere.
I was a pretty big Pink Floyd fan from age 15 on up, and being interested in the stories behind the music I dug, I was soon in the know about Syd Barrett, his input, influence, and also his solo work. Still, I don’t own any of his solo album (or close to every PF album, for what it’s worth).
Dominoes is probably my favorite of his solo stuff. I heard the guitar track here was recorded,then laid backwards on the track. Eerie how it fits.
Here’s David Gilmour covering it.
Do I own one? Yes. Do I ever listen to it: No.
Same as with the Skip Spence record.