The Post-Death Sales Jump... WAY bigger than expected

All discussion related to Roger Keith (Syd) Barrett.
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Freddie Mercury
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Post by Freddie Mercury »

What are the sales ranking from and what country are they for? I can't imagine Piper being in the Top 10 in the US, unless it has hip-hop on it somewhere....
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Post by crofloyd »

there's a topic that there should be a tribute show and the money would go to mental & diabetes funds... instead, I think that the money from PULSE should be donated to these institutions - Syd's death boosted the sales, sad, but true!
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Post by moom »

Keith Jordan wrote:Syd for number one!!!!!! Imagine how great that would be!!
YEAH!!!
but ASOS - #124??? :( that had to be #1, imho..........
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Post by SydsMadcapGirl »

Norbert Wilkins wrote: I know you want to keep them perfect and unopened and nice, but if you were to invest in a nice audiophile quality turntable and amplifier and a pair of decent speakers and then took the plunge and took the records out of their packaging and listened to them...
Point taken, however that is unnecessary considering I had them on CD many years before buying them on vinyl. The records are more like collectors items.
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Post by Tenniru »

Freddie Mercury wrote:What are the sales ranking from and what country are they for? I can't imagine Piper being in the Top 10 in the US, unless it has hip-hop on it somewhere....
Those are the American lists. I know, it's shocking: I suspect hip-hop began to die when all the gansta kidz watched Live 8 for their homiez and Gs and wound up sitting through Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Brian Wilson, and The Who and realized the stuff they were waiting for was crap.
(I'm a teenager, by the way, so it's very difficult for me when I say that in public.)
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Post by Freddie Mercury »

crofloyd wrote:there's a topic that there should be a tribute show and the money would go to mental & diabetes funds... instead, I think that the money from PULSE should be donated to these institutions - Syd's death boosted the sales, sad, but true!
You're right! And this is exactly along the same lines as what I was just going to post....

Does anyone else find it kind of crummy that most of the band (other than Roger) doesn't even know what was wrong with Syd after 30 years? Wouldn't you think they'd look up a condition and say "Oh this is why Syd acts the way he does" or ask the doctors what he was diagnosed with? Roger has indeed said that Syd has schizophrenia, but for everyone else including the press, it's always something general like "mental deterioration". Dave said:

"It was a deep-rooted thing. But I'll say the psychedelic experience might well have acted as a catalyst. Still, I just don't think he could deal with the vision of success and all the things that went with it."

If you have schizophrenia, it has nothing to do with not being able to deal with success...it's simply hard to do anything if you're having hallucinations all day! It seems like the issues with Syd could have brought to light more education about certain mental illnesses...the press for example could have said "Syd had schizophrenia, and these are some of the symptoms...." But they couldn't be bothered to look up the proper terms or symptoms either (poor reporting), and just said he had mental problems which makes him sound like it was his fault and he was just a drug addict . (If it was schizophrenia, he would have indeed probably ended up that way anyway despite the drugs...why doesn't anyone ever seem to know this?).

I just don't understand why to this day nobody ever seems to actually know what was wrong with Syd or what he was diagnosed with...it just always seemed sort of disrespectful, like the stereotype of the olden days when the mentally ill were locked up and nobody bothered to think about them after that....
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Post by David Smith »

I thought Syd was never actually diagnosed, by a professional, to have schizophrenia
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Post by Keith Jordan »

David Smith wrote:I thought Syd was never actually diagnosed, by a professional, to have schizophrenia
I believe he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital?
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Post by David Smith »

Keith Jordan wrote:
David Smith wrote:I thought Syd was never actually diagnosed, by a professional, to have schizophrenia
I believe he spent some time in a psychiatric hospital?
Sure i heard somewhere he didn't fit the typifications of the condition though
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Post by Lady_Pink_Floyd »

I'm glad that people that were not familiar with his work are now loving it. It's sad that he had to die first though, it really is.....But that;s I guess how it works in the music biz...I remember after Live 8 last year Echoes sold tons of copies overnight.
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Post by J Ed »

Freddie Mercury wrote: I just don't understand why to this day nobody ever seems to actually know what was wrong with Syd or what he was diagnosed with...it just always seemed sort of disrespectful, like the stereotype of the olden days when the mentally ill were locked up and nobody bothered to think about them after that....
you make a good point, though I think its not known absolutely what was Syd's handicap
Ive seen someone else here make a good argument for Asperger's syndrome,
and i'm sure if there were a definitive psychological diagnosis, that his family would do all they could to keep it private

but press-wise, there is unfortunately still a massive social stigma against schizophrenia
I've lived in neighbourhoods with lots of psychiatric outpatients, and its common for neighbours and shopkeepers to just shake their heads and say these people are "inherently" bad cuz "something's wrong" with them mentally
I dont think it would be socially acceptable to dismiss a person that way if they had any other type of disability
and re: syd, we can see that its somehow more acceptable to be seen as the original 60s drug casualty than it is to admit he suffered from a mental illness
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Post by AtomHeartMomma »

SydsMadcapGirl wrote:
Norbert Wilkins wrote: I know you want to keep them perfect and unopened and nice, but if you were to invest in a nice audiophile quality turntable and amplifier and a pair of decent speakers and then took the plunge and took the records out of their packaging and listened to them...
Point taken, however that is unnecessary considering I had them on CD many years before buying them on vinyl. The records are more like collectors items.
To keep the records unblemished, clean them with record cleaner after each use, clean the stylus before using turntable, and keep albums in an upright position. If you lay them down, they will eventually warp, and then you will cry.
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Post by SydsMadcapGirl »

They are upright, and they're still in the plastic. I'll never ever ever take them out. :lol:
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Post by Freddie Mercury »

J Ed wrote:but press-wise, there is unfortunately still a massive social stigma against schizophrenia
I've lived in neighbourhoods with lots of psychiatric outpatients, and its common for neighbours and shopkeepers to just shake their heads and say these people are "inherently" bad cuz "something's wrong" with them mentally
I dont think it would be socially acceptable to dismiss a person that way if they had any other type of disability
and re: syd, we can see that its somehow more acceptable to be seen as the original 60s drug casualty than it is to admit he suffered from a mental illness
Very well put! Yes I think what bothers me is there's so much of a stigma toward mental illness still in 2006 that even a brief review of his life in the press is totally uninformed and incomplete (the mental illness was more a part of his life than Pink Floyd IMHO).

It also bothers me that, after working in the Psych department for a University, I saw how most of the doctors don't give a damn and don't help anyone, and the whole thing may prove that even if you're Syd Barrett you still can't get a psychiatrist to care about you.