I've been listening to The Madcap Laughs a lot recently and thought I'd start a thread to talk about how damn amazing this record is. I also noticed that BleedingHeart has a Syd Barrett avatar and something about the Madcap Laughs written under her username, so there's obviously some more Syd Barrett love around on the board.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this record and who've just clicked this randomly, or because you trust my well-established musical reputation on this board I'll attempt to describe the sound. The actual music is mostly about simple guitar progressions and chords - no silly solos - and cute but druggy lyrics about naive but brilliant things like love and fishes. His voice is a bit deadpan, a little flat - not conventionally melodic - but it's natural and unforced. The accent is the best bit. I love it when English singers sing in their own accent, without disguising it at all, even emphasising it.

I've decided I like the outtakes at the end more than the songs, especially Love You. The piano in the actual song is nicely detuned and jazzy, but I like how the outtake sounds more disorganised and laid back; just Barrett's voice and a guitar. You hear the words more on the outtakes - in this case they're the best sort of lyrics for a love song, seemingly disparate words all rushed and tangled up together into a big delirious soup that somehow makes sense when he sings it.

You can really see where Graham Coxon gets his inspiration from; I have a live version of him singing Here I Go, just the perfect song for his voice.

Now, I've never really listened to much Pink Floyd, except for when I've been a captive audience in my Dad's car. My reason is - don't laugh - that I've sort of been put off by my Dad's love for them. I'm ... independent ... well, I like to think that I forge my own musical path. I believe that music is crucial to forming your own identity, and that someone should just take on someone else's - especially that of their parents - is one I find completely abhorrent. Otherwise there's no development from one generation to the next, or even one person to the next. Which would obviously be really boring, not to mention lazy.

The Pink Floyd that I have in my head represents almost everything I hate about music - the hideous pomposity of musical ideas like "soundscapes", vast musical wastelands of unbelievable dullness and lengthy, directionless saxophone solos. I never really thought there was anything there except a chasm of vacuous pretentiousness, until I came across this record at the end of last year. So is the "Syd Barrett era" worth listening to? Perhaps someone can advise me.

Maybe I just have a short attention span.

And lets not forget this:





[And imagine that there is a drooling smiley here, since we don't have them anymore]

if you like the more stripped down stuff you might not like his work with floyd as much... it isn't grand, pompous and spacial like mid period floyd, but it is goofy and psychedelic.
syd makes good use of the electric guitar, but you will find the germ of what floyd would later become- a lot of the songs are over the ordinary 2 minutes 50 pop songs were at the time, and go off into unfocused freeforms.

still. try 'bike'; that one got me hooked.