Shine on you crazy diamond

I am often asked about favourite bands and favourite music.
It is a bad thing for me. Selection angst.
How ever a few bands really appeal to me and I have followed some of them for more than 40 years. The best examples being The Beatles and especially McCartney (see older blogs), Jethro Tull, Clapton and a few others.
One band I always return to is the Pink Floyd.
And in particular two records. Leave you thinking and coming back to this.
They are a crazy diamond.
Established as the Pink Floyd Blues band, The Pink Floyd Sound and several other interesting names, they were five, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Rick Wright and Bob Klose. These guys joined hands in the 1960´s and soon became known for psychadelia, long soundexperiments and funny songs by Syd Barrett. Bob Klose left in 1966, before they did any serious recording. Barrett took over in the sense that his songs were seen as qurky, interesting and different. Barrett defined a musical road for the band and his music gathered fans that saw it as treason when Barrett was dropped from the band in 1968. Barrett was however badly ill with mental problems. He would vanish into a world of his own and stand inactive on the stage. To try and solve this the other members got an old mate of Barretts to join. He was/is a top class guitarist, good singer and a top musician. This was David Gilmour.
As Barretts illness became a greater problem the band saw no other way than to drop him.
I am often asked about favourite bands and favourite music.
It is a bad thing for me. Selection angst.
How ever a few bands really appeal to me and I have followed some of them for more than 40 years. The best examples being The Beatles and especially McCartney (see older blogs), Jethro Tull, Clapton and a few others.
One band I always return to is the Pink Floyd.
And in particular two records. Leave you thinking and coming back to this.
They are a crazy diamond.
Established as the Pink Floyd Blues band, The Pink Floyd Sound and several other interesting names, they were five, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Rick Wright and Bob Klose. These guys joined hands in the 1960´s and soon became known for psychadelia, long soundexperiments and funny songs by Syd Barrett. Bob Klose left in 1966, before serious recordings had happened and Barrett took over in the sense that his songs were seen as qurky, interesting and different. Barrett defined a musical road for the band and his music gathered fans that saw it as treason when Barrett was dropped from the band in 1968 and it did change direction dramatically. Barrett was however badly ill with mental problems. He vanish into a world of his own and stand inactive on the stage. To try and solve this the other memebers got an old mate of Barretts to oin. He was a top class guitarist, good singer and a top musician. This was David Gilmour.

Piper at the gates of dawn.

As Barretts illness became a greater problem the band saw no other way than to drop him.
They had released "Piper at the gates of dawn."

A saucerful of secrets

The first album after Barrett was "A saucerful of secrets" and it contained songs by him. And more. They however were headed for problems by then. The diection was quite unclear and remained so for a while.

Ummagumma (1969) sounds like a possible last effort. Two vinyls. One is their live setlist and the other one was constructed so that each of the four had a half a side to write for. A bit restless and here and there.

Atom heart mother (1970) has certain leads to where they might head, especially in the way they use tape loops and recorded effects.

Meddle (1971) is very much a Gilmour/Waters thing. It has the song Fearless with the Liverpool crowd doing their "you never walk alone" and a few quite good songs but the masterpiece was Echoes. Thats a really good piece of work.

Then came Obscured by clouds, another movie soundtrack and it has some intresting music indeed.  They had done a few moviesoundtracks and probably could have turned that into a career but >>>>>=====>>>>








Just let the record show that I did not follow them at the time. I caught the bus with their next little thing...