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As a good terminal Barrettian, every now and then I pick up my copy of "The Wind in the Willows" and randomly read a few lines, savoring the words thoroughly.
Then, borrowing the sleepy melody of “Terrapin” or the lively rhythm of “Octopus”, I start humming them, perhaps reworking and rhyming a bit. It’s a game my friend Edgar taught me a long time ago.
Yes, I know, the seventh chapter of that fantastic book shares the same title as the first Floyd album, but it’s always the songs from “Madcap” that come to mind.
“Madcap”… The first time I listened to it, I told myself: oh no, no, it can't be... I want to live here, in this magic bubble, in this limping and crooked grace.
And I somewhat abandoned “Piper” and the fresh and cheeky “Syd,” the one with the powerful and derailing sound and sugary melodies streaked with acid.
And I embraced that other "Syd," the sleepy one, the one that occasionally crackles like an old stove or a cough and plays guitar chords that seem like rafts always about to sink.
And I wasn’t alone in this delirium; Edgar was there too. Yes, we were really terminal. And we did crazy things, or maybe just silly ones.
For example, we imagined we were the authors of a Barrettian dictionary and invented dry definitions for the songs, like "a journey inside the bubbles just before they burst like a blues played by a lazy minstrel who doesn't even know he’s playing" (“Terrapin”); or "a fabulous and astonishing verbal tour de force on capricious and crackling music, almost like the primer of meteorological phenomena or the burning encyclopedia of jolts came to life" (“Octopus”).
Ah, sometimes we surrendered, for a track like “Long Gone” really left us speechless (and indeed what was it, blues, folk, psychedelia?), or we took notes pointing out, for example, that the organ touches in “No Good Trying” darted like little snakes.
Or we organized the champions league of “Barrett” songs, starting from the round of sixteen, making draws with slips of paper bearing the names of the songs.
Between the two of us, Edgar was definitely the more brilliant. He, passionate about folk, both English and Italian, discovered a close cousin of “Golden Hair” in a Marche serenade.
Oh my gosh, to him it was a close cousin, I wasn’t so sure about that.
“Golden Hair” (“Look out the window, golden hair”) is that wonder of wonders from “Madcap,” that solemn little thing, with night echoes and reverberations, fireflies here and there, and a voice that gives you chills.
Then Edgar kept a drawing of a trilobite in bright colors (yellow, orange, blue, and pink) like a relic, which he had stolen from his seven-year-old niece and claimed it was the caterpillar from “No Good Trying.”
And he translated the songs without knowing almost anything about English. His method wasn’t really the best, as he limited himself to cross-referencing different translations he knew, and when he could, he did it alone, risking to make monumental blunders.
For example, if I told you “she wandered over the bridge, on the water, then ceasing her slow advance, moved away from that spreading, only she intoxicated, only she hidden in the small valley of my gaze,” I should also tell you that this is “Barrett” only fifty percent, and it would be pure luck if it were more. Anyway, it didn’t matter since I didn’t know English either.
And yet this little piece of text (Edgar/Barrett) is taken from “Feel,” a highly underrated track which is actually a damn lied, a “Golden Hair” in sixteenth notes with a bit more of ramshackle imperfection, solemn certainly, but kind of offbeat, where we’re strumming and not so cool.
Here, we are in the presence of a psychic folk/blues even if it still retains a little bit of Tinker Bell's powder, and really the bare minimum, considering that with that ending (“just as I’ll be leaving on a swaying wheel they’ll strike, the strangled sob, the sound of a cursed bell”) Tinker Bell has nothing to do. It’s a magnificent text, and it even reminds me (maybe I’m exaggerating) of certain “Illuminations” by “Rimbaud.”
Edgar was fantastic and still is, even though over the years he’s gone a bit out of his mind. At home, I have a novel he wrote, something that is all over the place. But opening it at random, it still works quite well. And even those bits of wisdom/madness are excellent fish for the Barrettian melody net.
Just like that novel, “Madcap” is something enormous, “a painting as big as a wall” according to the famous definition by “Syd” himself, and without even the nails to hang it, Edgar added.
But maybe the phrase was “as big as a ceiling,” I don’t remember well.
“Madcap,” genial and whimsical, goes in all directions, allowing itself pauses in the most unexpected places, and does so by grinding genres, as each song is a genre unto itself, between vagueness and sudden sparks, between vaudeville jokes and drunken songs, between sepulchral folk and poignant nighttime ballads. Yet amid all this chaos, which was perhaps the chaos of a soul, it manages to be bare, essential, basic. Almost a low-budget film, compared to the Piperian blockbuster.
Low budget and with grainy film.
And the ancient splendor perhaps only remains in the already mentioned “Golden Hair” and in “Octopus,” which are then the two strong points of the record.
“Octopus,” the epitome of Barrettian imagery, is all about the rhythm of the words, and it gives the idea of a fantastic deck of cards, shuffled and thrown into the air. I refer to “Rob Chapman” and his “Irregular Thoughts” for an exhaustive map of the many citations of a whole series of obscure and eccentric British authors. These are pages that take your breath away, as the song does.
Yes, “Octopus” and “Golden Hair” still fly thanks to Tinker Bell’s powder, but the heart of the album lies in other songs, in those simple and touching nocturnes about absence (“Dark Globe,” “Late Night,” “Feel”), or in the lazy and hypnotic “Terrapin,” the one with the bubbles about to burst.
“Sometimes I feel so alone and unreal...” he sings in “Late Night” accompanied by a guitar sketching magic lantern light plays.
“I’ve tattooed my brain in every way, will you miss me, will you miss me a little bit?...” he sings in a raucous voice in “Dark Globe” accompanied by a tavern-like lousy guitar.
All unusually moving for someone who had been pop, magical, mysterious, and hyper-artistic. But moving, never.
The songs from “Madcap” were for me the luminous appearance of something I didn’t think existed, a stripped-down and lazy, amateurish and childlike music, capable, like few others, of caressing the heart and soul.
And I’ve always seen “Syd Barrett” as a mystical/starlit busker capable of fluttering that inner mumble destined otherwise to suffocate in dust.
Too bad it didn’t help him much.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Terrapin (05:04)
I really love you and I mean you
The star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
I wouldn't see you and I love to
I fly above you, yes I do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
The fins a luminous
Fangs all 'round the clown
Is dark below the boulders hiding all
The sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
The move about is all we do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
The fins a luminous
Fangs all 'round the clown
Is dark below the boulders hiding all
The sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
The move about is all we do
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
I really love you and I mean you
The star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
02 No Good Trying (03:27)
It's no good trying to place your hand
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
and you're rocking me backwards
and you're rocking towards the
red and yellow mane of a stallion horse.
It's no good trying to hold your love
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
the caterpillar hood won't cover the head of you
know you should be home in bed.
It's no good holding your sequin fan
where I can't see because I understand
that you're different from me
yes I can tell
that you can't be what you pretend
yes you're spinning around and around in a car
with electric lights flashing very fast...
05 Dark Globe (02:02)
Oh where are you now
pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?
When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, lift a hand
I'm only a person whose armbands beat
on his hands, hang tall
won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?
The poppy birds way
swing twigs coffee brands around
brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
my head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?
07 Octopus (03:48)
Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro'
You have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon
Hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we break
Cracked by scattered needles
The little minute gong
Coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand
Hey ho, never be still
The old original favorite grand
Grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is "In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro'
You have no word
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood
Meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed...
Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo
It's true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
The madcap laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their bag
The seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep
The wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats
The squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never meet
So merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here
Close our eyes to the octopus ride!
08 Golden Hair (02:00)
Lean out your window, golden hair
I heard you singing in the midnight air
my book is closed, I read no more
watching the fire dance, on the floor
I've left my book, I've left my room
For I heard you singing through the gloom
singing and singing, a merry air
lean out the window, golden hair...
09 Long Gone (02:50)
She was long gone, long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
and I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
the beauty of love's in her eyes...
She was long gone, long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I borrowed the page
from a leopard's cage
and I prowled in the evening sun's glaze
her head lifted high to the light in the sky
the opening dawn on her face...
She was long gone long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
And I stood very still by the window sill
and I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind
the beauty of love's in her eyes...
She was long gone long, long gone
she was gone, gone, the bigger they come
the larger her hand 'till no one understands
why for so long she'd been gone.
She was long gone long, long gone...
11 Feel (02:36)
You feel me
away far too empty, oh so alone!
I want to go home
Oh find me inside of a nocturne - the blonde
how I love you to be by my side
they wail...
the crowd on her side
she straggled the bridge by the water...
She misses her crawl
far ley grew
heady aside in a dell
inside an eye be the lonely one, my bride
how I leave on the waddling wheel
they flail...
a gasp shringing
a bad bell's ringing
the angel - the daughter...
You feel me...
13 Late Night (03:17)
When I woke up today
and you weren't there to play
then I wanted to be with you
when you showed me your eyes
whispered love at the skies
then I wanted to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
When I lay still at night seeing
stars high and light
then I wanted to be with you
when the rooftops shone dark
all alone (I) saw a spark
spark of love just to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
If I mention your name
turn around on a chain
then the sky opens for you
when we grew very tall
when I saw you so small
then I wanted to stay with you
inside me I feel alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...
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Other reviews
By giov
"You play without rules and keep thinking that your guitar on 'Here I Go' is pretty out of tune. Someone, in the future, will think it’s some strange seventh chord and that you’re a genius."
"You are the most suffocating spark at this precise moment. You are the walrus. You are ‘The Walrus.’"
By .ZoSo.
The Madcap Laughs is a completely naked and raw work, a snapshot of Barrett’s mind, sometimes romantic and poetic and other times desperate and pessimistic.
Amid insecurities, euphoria, and despair, Syd managed to create a true masterpiece. A different masterpiece, more introspective, but still unique.
By endriu
Syd did not want to expose himself to the public, didn’t want to become a VIP or be constantly in the spotlight; he just wanted to tell his rhymes with his guitar to people.
The Madcap Laughs is much more suited to Syd’s personality, free to roam to distant places with his acoustic guitar, without a necessarily full-bodied accompaniment.
By Valeriorivoli
Madcap Laughs is the psychotic diary of an artist on a no-return journey within himself.
To be listened to in all its genuine madness on foggy and gloomy days, hoping for a sunny dawn to dispel the ghosts.
By gluca1985
"The songs on 'The Madcap Laughs' are in continuous evolution, suspended in a dimension accessible only to Barrett."
"He gifts us not an album but rather a piece of himself, a snapshot of his life."
