Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett (vocals, guitar); Roger Waters (vocals, bass); Rick Wright (piano, organ); Nick Mason (drums).
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England.
2 LPS on 1 CD. PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN was released in 1967 and A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS was released in 1968. Both are available separately on CD.
This 40th Anniversary box set offers three-discs of Syd Barrett and Co.'s dementedly catchy and haunting psychedelia. The first two discs feature the British release sequence in mono and stereo sound--both remastered--while the third disc contains several outtakes and rare singles. The real gems of the haul, the outtakes include alternate versions of album classics such as "Matilda Mother" and "Interstellar Overdrive" and the band's first three singles with B-sides: "Arnold Layne," "Candy and a Currant Bun," "See Emily Play," "Apples and Oranges," and "Paintbox." While many of the latter were released on RELICS, these digital remasters outshine previous renderings.
Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett (guitar); Richard Wright (organ); Roger Waters (bass guitar); Nick Mason (drums).
Why the American version of this compilation of the group's highly esteemed first two LPs merits so low a rating requires some explanation. The American version of A Nice Pair is a classic example of a good idea gone bad through the ineptitude of the people actually carrying it out. In the wake of the mega-hit status achieved earlier in 1973 by Dark Side of the Moon, executives at Capitol Records, in tandem with their counterparts in other countries, decided to remarket the group's earlier catalog; in America, this meant reissuing their first two LPs, Piper at the Gates of Dawn (originally issued stateside as Pink Floyd, in edited form) and A Saucerful of Secrets, both of which originally appeared on the Capitol subsidiary label Tower and were, by then, out of print. The result was a double LP called A Nice Pair, which was also put out in England -- which was odd, since both original albums were still readily in print on that side of the Atlantic. At least in England they got it right, releasing a straight compilation of the two original albums' contents. In America, however, the geniuses at Capitol had to add tracks in order to make the first platter, containing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, complete -- but instead of adding the original studio version of "Astronomy Domine," they took the very different live version from two years later off of the Ummagumma album and slapped it on, chopping off the applause at the end. The result was ludicrous, as well as frustrating to the most serious members of a vast legion of new American fans acquired in the wake of Dark Side of the Moon, who discovered that they still had to buy an imported LP to fill in their early history of the group or to absorb the way in which the band presented themselves in the opening minutes of their first LP. What made it worse was that it would have been no more expensive to get it right than it was to get it wrong -- they simply needed someone handling the matter (which was hardly rocket science) who knew what he was doing. Otherwise, the most notable element of A Nice Pair was its outer jacket by Hipgnosis, which was made up of 18 different images, one of which was a substitute for a recalcitrant Floyd Patterson, who wanted 5,000 dollars for the use of an image of him tinted pink on the cover; thus, the boxer, in a manner similar to that of Leo Gorcey on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, aced himself out of a chance at footnote-level immortality in the rock music firmament. The cover was also censored in the U.S.A., a sticker covering a pair of female breasts and other, minor problems entailed with some of the images on various fronts. Otherwise, the American version of the album is just a well-meaning but unnecessarily flawed effort at exploiting the band's history. ~ Bruce Eder
The title of Pink Floyd's debut album is taken from a chapter in Syd Barrett's favorite children's book, The Wind in the Willows, and the lyrical imagery of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is indeed full of colorful, childlike, distinctly British whimsy, albeit filtered through the perceptive lens of LSD. Barrett's catchy, melodic acid pop songs are balanced with longer, more experimental pieces showcasing the group's instrumental freak-outs, often using themes of space travel as metaphors for hallucinogenic experiences -- "Astronomy Domine" is a poppier number in this vein, but tracks like "Interstellar Overdrive" are some of the earliest forays into what has been tagged space rock. But even though Barrett's lyrics and melodies are mostly playful and humorous, the band's music doesn't always bear out those sentiments -- in addition to Rick Wright's eerie organ work, dissonance, chromaticism, weird noises, and vocal sound effects are all employed at various instances, giving the impression of chaos and confusion lurking beneath the bright surface. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn successfully captures both sides of psychedelic experimentation -- the pleasures of expanding one's mind and perception, and an underlying threat of mental disorder and even lunacy; this duality makes Piper all the more compelling in light of Barrett's subsequent breakdown, and ranks it as one of the best psychedelic albums of all time. ~ Steve Huey
Why this alleged compilation of the group's highly esteemed first two LPs merits so low a rating requires explanation. The American version of A Nice Pair is a classic example of a good idea gone bad through the ineptitude of the people actually carrying it out. In the wake of the mega-hit status achieved earlier in 1973 by Dark Side of the Moon, executives at Capitol Records, in tandem with their counterparts in other countries, decided to remarket the group's earlier catalog; in America, this meant reissuing their first two LPs, Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, both of which had originally appeared (the first in edited form) on the subsidiary Capitol Tower label in America, and were, by then, out of print. The result was a double LP called A Nice Pair, which was also put out in England -- which was odd, since both original albums were still readily in print on that side of the Atlantic, though over there it was probably just a means of getting that early part of their catalog, which had been released on EMI's Columbia label, shifted over to the Harvest Records imprint where the rest of their stuff resided, and it was a chance to resell and repackage the two discs in a design closer to the current look of the band's releases. At least in England they got it right, releasing a straight compilation of the two original albums' contents. In America, however, the geniuses at Capitol had to add tracks in order to make the first platter, containing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, complete -- and instead of adding the original studio version of "Astronomy Domine," they took the very different live version from two years later off of the Ummagumma album and slapped it on. The result was ludicrous, as well as frustrating to the most serious members of a vast legion of new American fans acquired in the wake of Dark Side of the Moon, who discovered that they still had to buy an imported LP to fill in their early history of the group or to absorb the way in which the band presented themselves in the opening minutes of their first LP. What made it worse was that it would have been no more expensive to get it right than it was to get it wrong -- they simply needed someone handling the matter (which was hardly rocket science) who knew what they were doing. Otherwise, the most notable element of A Nice Pair was its outer jacket (the inner jacket reprinting the two albums' original designs) by Hipgnosis, which was made up of 18 different images, one of which was a substitute for a recalcitrant Floyd Patterson, who wanted 5,000 dollars for the use of an image of him tinted pink on the cover; the boxer thus, in a manner similar to that of Leo Gorcey on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, aced himself out of a chance at footnote-level immortality in the rock music firmament. The cover was also censored in the U.S.A., a sticker covering a pair of female breasts and other, minor problems entailed with some of the images on various fronts. Otherwise, A Nice Pair is just a well-meaning but flawed effort at exploiting the band's history. ~ Bruce Eder
When the Beatles recorded SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND in 1967, they kicked a new band out of a neighboring studio to do some overdubs for "Lovely Rita." The band was Pink Floyd and, while the Beatles were polishing up what many consider to be the gold standard of British psychedelia, Syd Barrett and Co. were already upending the young genre with PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN. Produced by Norman Smith--the Beatles' chief engineer in the early '60s--PIPER catapulted the British Invasion into the cosmos. With an explosive spirit barely contained within pop's dictates, the tracklist has an array of classics. Roger Waters's sinister bass slinks beneath the aural lysergy of "Instellar Overdrive" and "Lucifer Sam," while Rick Wright's organ drones envelop harmonic whimsies like "Matilda Mother."
Ultimately, PIPER, the only Floyd record that seriously included him, belongs to Barrett. Using the electric guitar as a textural dervish, turning pop convention into shifting melodic quicksand, and introducing childlike lyricism into the psychedelic lexicon (the album's name comes from his favorite children's book, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS), his voice and songwriting astound. Indeed, Barrett's blown-mind cadences are as much a symbol of psychedelia as Hendrix's strat or George Harrison's sitar. His voice simply sounds like tripping, and captures all the ungraspable beauty and fearful fragility of the experience. An extraordinary debut record, PIPER remains Barrett's visionary statement of purpose. minimize