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Albums like these are no longer made. I know I’ve stated a cliché, but to the youngsters who consider today’s throwaway bands as "great," I say...listen to Pink Floyd, listen to Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Genesis...a whole new world will open up to you!
"The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn," the first album by Pink Floyd, year 1967. Syd Barrett, Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason...four names that sparked a legend. Pink Floyd is one of the most famous and influential bands in the music world. I never said Pink Floyd is the absolute best; one can't make such a statement from a purely objective point of view. However, when I listen to a Pink Floyd album...I take off! Especially when I listen to one of the early Floyd albums. Madness, experimentation, psychedelia, magic.
This first album is the result of a brilliant, insane, and undeniably disturbed mind. I'm obviously talking about Syd Barrett, the "mad diamond," the ghost of the rock world, an apparition the Floyd never entirely shook off. The songs written for this album are mostly his works, and they are tales, fables soaked in madness and acid, the very acid he consumed which "provided" him with incredible hallucinations. Expert critics still claim today that this record is not only a milestone in the world of rock and psychedelia but also an inexhaustible source of innovation for genres like indie rock, punk rock and noise rock.
All the tracks are mind-bending "trips," but clearly, something always stands out more than the others. In this case, the album's first track "Astronomy Domine" is an extraordinary piece, pure psychedelic rock, which will also become a classic in live performances, although, as you all perhaps know, live performances by the Floyd featured their tracks quite differently from the studio version. And live, "Astronomy Domine" is much longer, much more psychedelic, how I would have loved to see one of those live shows when they were still a "niche band" and didn’t play on mega stages surrounded by costly lasers! Legend has it that the band saw their leader Syd playing with oranges, saying he saw them as two planets...around him, not a hotel room...but the cosmos...talk about "being burnt out"!!! But damn what he came up with!!!! Another very important piece and certainly even crazier than "Astronomy Domine" is the (in the literal sense of the word) hallucinatory "Interstellar Overdrive," an instrumental piece nothing short of magnificent. Watching Barrett pass a lighter or a bulb over the strings of his guitar in a moment of whatever crazy delirium is an extraordinary experience in itself. Even live, "Interstellar Overdrive" was very different from the studio version, much longer, more mysterious, and if anything, excessively crazier. "Interstellar Overdrive"...to space...and never back! The other tracks are equally important and highly psychedelic (Flaming, Lucifer Sam, Matilda Mother, and so on...) and undoubtedly contribute to making this journey even more reckless and fantastic towards the impenetrable mysteries of its creator's mind!
The Floyd at the time were considered "dangerous," because if on the radio tracks like "Arnold Layne" or "See Emily Play" aired, then in the legendary club "UFO," the Floyd let loose and caused a frenzy with "Interstellar Overdrive"...and the acid going around there...in tons! In short, Floyds started with a bang, a masterpiece, an absolute milestone.
Now, many might say the usual phrase "a very fan-like review"...indeed I am a fan of the Floyd (but not only Floyd)...to be honest, I am more for classical music than rock. For me, music bears the name Bach, Beethoven, Mozart...so that you understand. However, it is undeniable when you listen to an album like this that you are facing something unique in its genre, today it has even more value than back then, because today you realize how crazy these artists were and how they experimented without any worry, they did not censor themselves, they poured everything into their art, and such albums emerged. Naturally, the Floyd were not the only ones...the Beatles, for instance...they also "traveled" greatly!
An extraordinary album and of extraordinary importance. An immortal masterpiece of rock history, a rock milestone to own and cherish jealously. The legend of Pink Floyd officially begins here!
VinnySparrow
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Astronomy Domine (04:12)
Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight 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.
Blinding signs flap,
Flicker, flicker, flicker blam. Pow, pow.
Stairway scare Dan Dare who's there?
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground
Lime and limpid green
The sounds surrounds the icy waters underground.
02 Lucifer Sam (03:07)
Lucifer Sam, siam cat.
Always sitting by your side
Always by your side.
That cat's something I can't explain.
Jennifer Gentle, you're a witch.
You're the left side
He's the right side.
Oh, no!
That cat's something I can't explain.
Lucifer go to sea.
Be a hip cat
Be a ship's cat.
Somewhere, anywhere.
That cat's something I can't explain.
At night prowling sifting sand.
Hiding around on the ground.
He'll be found when you're around.
That cat's something I can't explain.
04 Flaming (02:46)
Alone in the clouds all blue
Lying on an eiderdown.
Yippee! You can't see me
But I can you.
Lazing in the foggy dew
Sitting on a unicorn.
No fair, you can't hear me
But I can you.
Watching buttercups cup the light
Sleeping on a dandelion.
Too much, I won't touch you
But then I might.
Screaming through the starlit sky
Traveling by telephone.
Hey ho, here we go
Ever so high.
Alone in the clouds all blue
Lying on an eiderdown.
Yippee! You can't see me
But I can you.
08 The Gnome (02:13)
I want to tell you a story
About a little man
If I can.
A gnome named Grimble Grumble.
And little gnomes stay in their homes.
Eating, sleeping, drinking their wine.
He wore a scarlet tunic,
A blue green hood,
It looked quite good.
He had a big adventure
Amidst the grass
Fresh air at last.
Wining, dining, biding his time.
And then one day - hooray!
Another way for gnomes to say
Oooooooooomray.
Look at the sky, look at the river
Isn't it good?
Look at the sky, look at the river
Isn't it good?
Winding, finding places to go.
And then one day - hooray!
Another way for gnomes to say
Oooooooooomray.
Ooooooooooooooomray.
09 Chapter 24 (03:42)
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.
The time is with the month of winter solstice
When the change is due to come.
Thunder in the other course of heaven.
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.
10 The Scarecrow (02:11)
The black and green scarecrow as ev'ryone knows
Stood with a bird on his hat and straw everywhere
He didn't care...
He stood in a field where barley grows
His head did no thinking his arms didn't move
Except when the wind cut up rough
And mice ran around on the ground
He stood in a field where barley grows
The black and green scarecrow is sadder than me
But now he's resigned to his fate
'Cause life's not unkind
He doesn't mind
He stood in a field where barley grows
11 Bike (03:21)
I've got a bike
You can ride it if you like
It's got a basket
A bell that rings
And things to make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could
But I borrowed it
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I've got a cloak
It's a bit of a joke
There's a tear up the front
It's red and black
I've had it for months
If you think it could look good
Then I guess it should
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
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
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I've got a clan of gingerbread men
Here a man
There a man
Lots of gingerbread men
Take a couple if you wish
They're on the dish
You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things
I know a room full of musical tunes
Some rhyme
Some ching
Most of them are clockwork
Let's go into the other room and make them work
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Other reviews
By charles
From the very first record, you can tell what they would do in the future, which is create a sound all their own.
Excellent record, which deviates a bit from the typical Pink Floyd sound but is still a colossus in the history of music.
By zaireeka
Written at the tip of LSD.
One of those clocks, orphaned by the irreversible madness of Syd Barrett, was preserved by his old companions and made to chime once again at the start of Time.
By Moro1
Only Barrett can explain the masterpiece he composed and wrote, and he does it through the stories of a king told in a mother’s fairy tale.
He sang it almost 40 years ago and it is still the most beautiful of all.
By anthon
"From these first seconds, the listener is transported into an otherworldly dimension, a dimension that characterizes much of the album."
"Interstellar Overdrive represents the true innovation, in terms of harmonic-melodic physiognomy, of the album."
By AJAX
The early Pink Floyd managed to synthesize into a unique and inimitable vision the impulses from West Coast acid rock, ... and the love for genuinely English fairy-tale elements.
'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' captures both sides of the coin, marking a year when pop and the avant-garde went hand in hand.
