Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn

[30yrsydfan]

Put me on a deserted island with a generator & this is the ONLY album I would ever need. After Syd did this, no wonder he started to go a little bonkers. How do you top this album? I mean, what do you do for an encore after something as brilliant as this!??! Every song reaches me in a different way & it's always good. Syd might've realized it himself: "That's it. How do I top this because all the studio honchos were ALL over him for the next single? This is a whimsical psychedelictrip into Syd's mind. There is no love or death here, no one on a soapbox spouting political rhetoric. If I could, I would live in this album as I feel like Syd did, that the world is a scary gruesome place & I never wanted to be an adult anyway. I could smoke a joint sitting next to the Scarecrow,drink wine with Grimble Grumble & get in my rocket ship for Interstellar regions unknown. To me, this is it. The BEST album ever made....period!!

for an encore you ask?.... you write the madcap laughs and barrett then go completely insane and shut out the world.

[sonsofthedesert]

Absolutely brilliant album ,here the Floyd and moreso Syd Barrett demonstrate brilliance through simplicity in the same way Picasso and other notes artists were inspired by childlike intuition without adhering to preconceived standards.

This is also a musician's and guitar players delight because as a guitar player myself of 30 years you simply can't replicate the feel of the playing with just technique!

Case in point: Astronomy Domine' just burns with intent and aggression in a way i've never heard before yet it is very simple in technical terms to play on a guitar,same with Interstellar Overdrive.The other very important point about the album is that it is not overly derivative in its style in the way some albums from the 60s were very bluesy; ie Cream or overly Beatlesish in their lack of ambition.

In other words I LIKE IT !

[princessDungan74D]

I love the album very much. Syd was a very great song writer and he was very cute too(I love the 'fro). I think its a fun album and fair tail like. I like how child like Syd was.

[my breakfast.]

The last thing Syd did before he "went insane". Could have been a nice record but the shitty mixing on the stereo version annoys me. Bootlegs of Syd era Pink Floyd reveal the band actually had balls, whereas the album is like a cloudy mess with no bass frequencies, and a lot of unneccessary gimmicks and sound effects. I guess any bunch of guys allowed to run amock with Abbey Road's stuff would do the same, but Norman Smith still needs to lose a toe or something for what he did to the album.

[J Ed]

Ive got four different versions of this one
the 1st I bought was my teenage copy of A Nice Pair, which I figured was a deal because it was the same price as either album on its own
it wasnt till years later I realised the stoopid label had substituted the real Astronomy Domine with the Sydless Ummagumma version
a vinyl boot called Dark Side of the Moo was the first time I heard the authentic SydFloyd Astronomy, and I made me a cassette correcting the error

finally I bought a proper Piper ... its actually a hard album to find on vinyl (as is Saucerful and More)
my copy is apparantly the Fame reissue

then I stumbled across the original American Tower pressing all trashed up in a dollar bin and handed over my dollar in a heartbeat
for those of you who dont know:
the Tower label, who originally had the American rights, did the same thing that had been done to the Beatles early catalog: they dropped three songs (Astronomy, Flaming & Bike?) and added on their current hit single See Emily Play, so Emily is the opening track and Interstellar is the closing track and the whole album is about ten minutes shorter
this probably went out of print almost immediately, I gather the Floyd didnt really have an American audience until about 1970, and I also suspect its why A Nice Pair was created following their success in 73, and therefor the source somehow of the Astronomy screwup
I wonder what US-only frankenstein followup Tower would have come up with had they kept the rights to the band? you know the Stones' 12x5 is one of their best early albums and some folks really like the Beatles Second Album despite its inauthenticity

then of course I have the recent 3cd reissue
indubitably the best reisssue theyve ever given us, better than the PULSE dvd because I like the material more, and I suspect aside from PULSE the only one we're ever going to get
it could have used two more songs, though

[Apparatchik]

This is one of the best fusions of psychedelic pop and instrumental freakout music. I find it an enjoyable listen, no matter how many times I spin it. It really does sound like a "room full of musical tunes" so to speak.

[J Ed]

A Nice Pair is another candidate for my 5th ever Floydian purchase, but we dont actually have a thread for that one
pity, theres some interesting things to be said about it, moreso than some of the compilation albums we do have threads for
another iconic Hypgnosis cover for one thing

I posted a capsule review of Piper on another thread:

Piper however is mostly a masterpiece, excepting some songs on side 2
they never played like that again, that fast, that wacky, with that many changes in a song

indeed upon first listen it sounded like a completely different band, which it was, and one already completely confident in what they were doing, which the Sydless Floyd was not for another five years
the first side especially is full of lightning fast acid rock, almost protopunk in its intensity except its all so weird

but live recordings reveal that this album is not representative of what Syds Floyd really sounded like (Lets All Make Love..., which we also dont have a thread for, is probably moreso),
and I have great hopes for an Immersion Piper that includes that Gyllene Cirkeln concert, as well as the early demos Nick keeps hinting at in interviews

my first listen to live Syds Floyd:
a silver ceedee I purchased of Starclub Phyco, in the mid90s when such things actually were common in independent record stores
I returned it as it sounded so raw and so unlike Floyd, Syds or postSyd, I assumed it was just some stoners in their garage jamming on a couple of Floyd titles
a few years later I did some online research and realised in fact I had not been burned, and had foolishly rid myself of a genuine Floydian rarity!

[Flying pig437]

. Bootlegs of Syd era Pink Floyd reveal the band actually had balls, whereas the album is like a cloudy mess with no bass frequencies, and a lot of unneccessary gimmicks and sound effects. I guess any bunch of guys allowed to run amock with Abbey Road's stuff would do the same, but Norman Smith still needs to lose a toe or something for what he did to the album.

I just never notice things like that. I just think they're good songs.

[Vlad The Impaler]

Piper sounds like some geeky drug music that can only be appreciated while ruining your brain on acid. It doesnt hold up for crap which is why it doesnst sell for crap.

Sounds like a general statement implying a universal attitude. Odd. very odd. Well, to negate this all-encompassing spewage I have to say that the first time I ever heard piper I had not even so much as smoked a joint let alone any other mind-altering substance and I loved that record right away and to this day still do. To each their own of course but one shouldn't impose a judgement on something and make it sound like it applies to everyone. Feel free to to dislike it...I myself will feel free to like it....while not ruining my brain on acid. As for sales records....many many classic records of the past never sold all that well if you really do the research....doesn't change the status they may have achieved.

[Jack Wolf]

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

1. Astronomy Domine: A fine psychedelic extravaganza. The best song on the entire album and a good indication of where Pink Floyd was headed in the near future. - 8.5

2. Lucifer Sam: A very cool and stylish song about a cat! I love the main guitar riff. - 7.5

3. Matilda Mother: A child's fairy tale + a few hits of acid and this is what you got! - 7.0

4. Flaming: A child's fairy tale + a few hits of acid and this is...wait a minute, I'm starting to notice a pattern here. This one is a little better than the previous song. Unicorns, sleeping on a dandelion, and traveling by telephone? Somehow this all made sense to me. - 7.5

5. Pow R. Toc H: A fine mind-expanding instrumental. A tad bit unpleasant at the end but otherwise pretty good. - 7.0

6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk: A decent "freak out" song, has its good and bad parts. Not something I would want to listen to often. - 6.0

7. Interstellar Overdrive: An alright instrumental. I think it lacks structure and has too many chaotic parts. Some of the live versions of this song are clearly superior and sound more interesting. - 6.0

8. The Gnome: Another childish fairy tale song. Very simplistic and satisfying but lacks something. - 6.5

9. Chapter 24: A pleasant song about...I'm not exactly sure? But it sounds awfully nice. - 7.0

10. The Scarecrow: Another pleasant tune, this one about a scarecrow who "stands in a field where barely grows", lol - 7.0

11. Bike: A wacky, somewhat annoying, yet surprisingly catchy song. The ending was interesting. - 6.0

12. Album Artwork: A sort of kaleidoscope image of all the band members. I like it, looks very 60's-ish. - 7.0

Final score: 6.9 (out of 10)
(All the songs and album art scores added up and divided by 12)

Final word: A splendid first album that is entirely unique unto itself because it sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. None of the songs were terrible but a few of them seemed just above average. Although I enjoyed Syd's fairy tale-ish lullabies, I longed for songs more in the vein of "Astronomy Domine".

-Jack Wolf

[Flying pig437]

I nver got this for years 'cause I just had this idea it was a load of rubbish. When I got a copy out of the library one day out of curiosity I was gobsmacked at how much I loved it.

[danielcaux]

I think Alan should re-post here his PATGOD (mono) review, it is quite good . I was going to quote the whole thing, but instead I'm just going to say that this album stereo mix is an absolute disaster!

It's quite ironic that when listening to this album with headphones you actually find more pleasant a mono mix than an stereo mix, your ears almost feel thankful for listening it in mono. The stereo mix is a complete mess and really senseless a some points. It has a tendecy to pan the main instruments and voice to one channel, cluttering it to an extreme, while leaving the other channel almost empty just with some voice or guitar overdubs or drums. It's also quite unbalanced in terms of how the different elements are brought up or down in the mix. In some songs the different instruments sound like little critters in the background far away while the vocals are always up front. In the mono mix all elements have a clear and defined presence, a quality that gives all songs more punch. In particular the mono mixes of Pow R Toc H and The Gnome make those songs to spring to life, filling your head with music and joy, all is there and up front: Syd' guitar, Ricks piano, Roger's bouncy basslines and Nick's quite energic drumming (yep, in the mono Stethoscope it sounds almost like punk). In the stereo mix this songs sound detached and botchered, like somekind of frankenstein monster made of pieces and remnants from different takes that don't quite gel together.

It's very clear that the stereo mix was done in a time when producers or engineers didn't really know what to do or how to handle that technology. Once you listen to the mono mix of this album there really is no turning back.

Perhaps the only song where the stereo mix holds its own to the mono mix is Interstellar Overdrive. The stereo image is used quite well on that one, with all the ambient noodling travelling around you, creating quite a neat aural atmosphere. Too bad they botchered it at the end with that extreme panning of the main riff from one side to the other. Still, the mono version sounds more tight, obviously I guess, and fierce, and since all the instruments are mixed together, the interplay between Syd's guitar and Rick's organ almost feel like an alchemical thing, both instruments transmutate into something magical, a texture of sound at once compelling but also indecipherable.

[walter5]

I love the album very much. Syd was a very great song writer and he was very cute too(I love the 'fro). I think its a fun album and fair tail like. I like how child like Syd was.

You're not the only one. I was suprised when I reconnected with an old friend of mine from the Army, 25+ years ago, she's now a pre-school teacher, and I learned she has taught all of her 3-5 year old students for the last 20+ years "The Gnome Song" as one of their sing-along songs. I didn't realize (at the time) that she was paying that much attention to the music I was playing... and there she is, putting one of Syd's songs into impressionable young minds for two decades now! I wonder how many of them will grow up and recognize that song from their childhood... sort of like the first time I heard Bob Marley sing "Buffalo Soldier" and realized that the Hey-yeh-yeh chorus was swiped from the U.S. Saturday Morning kids show, "The Banana Splits"

[admiral panther]

Interstallar Overdrive is an all time favorite of mine.

[walter5]

Mine too, but I like the version recorded live in the studio for the "Let's Make Love In London" soundtrack. YMMV.