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The Madcap Laughs

Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs Audio CD

A fair review of the Syd Barrett "The Madcap Laughs" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Syd Barrett reviews here, or go back to the Syd Barrett tabs.

Band: Syd Barrett
Title: The Madcap Laughs
Rating:

Release Date: 1996-07-23
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Terrapin 2: No Good Trying 3: Love You 4: No Man's Land 5: Dark Globe 6: Here I Go 7: Octopus 8: Golden Hair 9: Long Gone 10: She Took a Long Cold Look 11: Feel 12: If It's in You 13: Late Night

madcap is mad cool!
i actually like this better than quite a few floyd discs. i first bought this on cassette back in the nineties when i was getting introduced to some of pink floyd's pre darkside of the moon material. it has a lot of great songs, "no good trying", "octopus", "long gone", "love you", "dark globe", "here i go" , "terrapin", "late night". 'madcap' is also better than the subsequent barrett albums that were released (1970's barrett album and the rarities collection from '88 opel).

One Mana One Music
No needs for words like Magic or Wierd, one Man and one Music, as much as he was "crazy" as much this music heals. . . Wonderfull!.

wouldn't you miss me at all?

There's a handful of people you could rightfully say were catalysts or instigators of epochal periods in human artistic development; one such period is what we like to call "The Sixties" and one such individual is Syd Barrett, the man who gave birth to Pink Floyd and helped to invent and define psychedelic music. It's just been announced that Syd has died from diabetes at age 60, so I thought I would write something about him and this seemed a good place to do it.

This record and the follow-up ("Barrett," with Syd's crazy drawings of bugs on the cover) are essential documents, not just for the inspired and demented songs but also for the somewhat overlooked idea that they helped to set the standard for the "confessional" songwriting of the 1970s. The nakedness of Syd's schizophrenia and declining mental state and their role in the performances here provide an unflinching, rare glimpse into real madness, warts and all. In a weird but highly effective way Syd's records paved the way for songwriters from Roky Erickson to Daniel Johnston to make their fragile psychological conditions reflect in their material, opening up some truly, well, crazy possibilities.

Syd's influence on music after 1967 is inestimable and unquantifiable. . . in his own way he was an avatar and you should get familiar with Pink Floyd's "Piper At the Gates of Dawn" and his own solo albums if you aren't already.

Today is a day to mourn the loss of a unique genius and to thank him for his contributions to the continuum. He is definitely one of those people (like Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons, Sam Cooke, and others) without whom things would have been substantially different and probably not as much fun.

.

A true curiosity
Syd Barrett's solo record has some great moments though. The Madcap Laughs is a sad record really,since it was made by one of the greatest musicians in rock history but it was made in a time when the musician was already in Section 8. Terrapin, No Good Trying and Octopus are all songs that typify the great ex-Pink Floyd front man. Weird lyrics, strange musical loops and surprising twists. The greatest on the album is a slow song though. Golden Hair is a true masterpiece and it is almost a shame that it only lasts 2 minutes. Anyway,the rest can't compete and that makes it a must have for every Floyd/Barrett fan(which I am)but for everybody else I would suggest The Floyd's debut Piper At the Gates of Dawn which has Syd's autograph written all over it.

Disintigration On Vinyl
Syd Barrett's first solo album is the work of a man completely falling apart. Ok, so it's more like disintigration on CD these days. As the founder of Pink Floyd, Barrett ingested enough LSD to drive a medium sized country mad, and by 1968 and 1969 (when this album was recorded) his mental state was very schizophrenic. Even with these problematic mental disorders (or maybe becasue of), Barrett managed to create a classic.

Following Barrett's dismissal from Pink Floyd in early 1968, the band's managers followed Barrett, assuming that the band could not survive without their creative light (oops). While time has obviously proved them wrong, they soon set Barrett to work with producer Malcomb Jones and the trippy combo The Soft Machine to create a pop album. Barrett's performances soon proved to be erratic and strange, and it was soon apparent that the music was not going to set the teen scene on fire. The sessions were shelved (although temporarily as many tracks are included on the album) and "Octopus" was unleashed as a single. It unsurprisingly did not go far.

Cut forward a few months and former bandmate Roger Waters and Syd's own replacement David Gilmore wheel Barrett back into the studio for some more fun and games. These sessions were acoustically based, and allowed Barrett to do pretty much whatever he wanted to do, even if it was endlessly strange.

The final album is a somewhat daunting listen, but quite phenomenal if you can get your mind into Syd's world, where things like rhythm are rather amorphous. "No Good Trying," "No Man's Land," "Octopus," and "Late Night" are strange but amazing masterpieces of psychedelic rock. On the first two especially, the backing musicians sound like they're furiously trying to keep up with Syd (no good trying?) and the music is always on the verge of flying apart at the seams in a wonderful and interesting sort of way. "Terrapin," "Dark Globe," and "Golden Hair" are the more acoustic classics.

Now I'm guilty of a bit of blasphemous resequencing in regards to my own copy of "The Madcap Laughs. " I've taken out "Feel" and "If It's In You," which I think qualify as acoustic shambles, and replace them with "Opel" and "Silas Lang. " These are outtakes from the Malcomb Jones sessions that I think are amazing (especially "Opel") and bewilderingly left off the album. They can be found on the otherwise hit or miss odds-and-sods complation "Opel. "

Although more expensive, I heartily recommend the EMI reissue of this disc. The remastering is far superior to Capitol's disc, and the alternate takes are illuminating. Barrett never played a song the same way twice; that was likely part of his madness. Better yet, get all of Barrett's remastered studio legacy in the "Shine On Crazy Diamond" box set (which may be a bit difficult as I think it's out of print).

You can see a complete list of all Syd Barrett discography, or go back to the Syd Barrett tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.