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Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper Biography
The Pink At The Gates Of Dawn, it's difficult for those unfamiliar with Pink Floyd's music or the burgeoning British music scene of the 60's to attribute great importance to Syd Barrett. All it takes to be convinced of Barrett's significance, however, is a careful listen to Piper, A Saucerful Of Secrets (the second LP), and the singles he wrote for the group (on Relics and Masters Of Rock, a Dutch collection). What Syd created in sound and imagery was brand new: at that time America hadn't even heard of Hendrixian feedback and distortion as part of a guitar's capabilities, and the Beatles were just recording Sergeant Pepper (at the same time and in the same studios) as Pink Floyd were cutting Piper. Barrett's music was as experimental as you could get without crossing over entirely into freeform jazz; there simply were no other bands extending the boundaries of rock beyond the basic 4/4 sex-and-love themes.
Syd certainly listened to American jazz, blues, jug band music and rock, as did most young British rock 'n' rollers of the time. He used to cite Bo Diddley as his major influence, yet these inputs are no more than alluded to in his music, which contains every style of guitar playing imaginable: funky rhythm churns up speeding riffs that distort into jazzy improvisation. At times an Eastern influence surfaces, blending vocal chants, jangling guitar and devotional hum in tunes like "Matilda Mother" and the lovely "Chapter 24," based on the I Ching.
Barrett's guitar work maintained a psychedelic, dramatic ambience of incongruous contrasts, violent changes and inspired psychosis. No technician a la Eric Clapton, Barrett simply knew his own particular instrument well and pushed it to its limits. Compared by critics to Jeff Beck, Lou Reed (in his early Velvet Underground days) and Jimi Hendrix, Barrett lacked only the consistency to match their achievements.
His trademark (and Achilles heel) was sudden surprise: trance-like riffs would slide abruptly into intense, slightly offbeat strumming ("Astronomy Domine"), choppy urgency gives way to powerful, frightening peaks ("Interstellar Overdrive"), harmless lyrics skitter over a fierce undertow of evil-sounding feedback and menacing wah-wah ("Lucifer Sam"). Stylized extremes made Barrett's guitar the focus of Floyd's early music; his instrumental mannerisms dominated each song even when Syd merely played chords. Barrett's rhythms were usually unpredictable; one never knew what process in Syd's brain dictated when to speed up or slow down the pace, when to sweeten or sour the sound, and when to wrench the tempo totally out of joint, shifting gears to turn rhythms inside-out. As a result, Barrett's playing was variously described by critics as "clumsy and anarchic," "adventurous and distinctive," "idiosyncratic,"
"revolutionary" or "brilliant and painful."
Indisputably Barrett was an innovator. Whether he was entirely conscious or in control of his art is impossible to determine; perhaps it's enough to say that he was indeed effective. His work with Pink Floyd still ranks as some of the most expressive, sensational playing recorded by a rock guitarist. Even 10 years later Barrett's solos stand as fixed entities in the overall scope of Pink Floyd's music; it's a rare long-term Floyd fan who doesn't know every note, each frenzy of feedback and electronic eccentricity. Yet Syd borrowed no familiar blue licks as the young Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were wont to do.
Barrett's songwriting genius was original and extremist as well. His singing was highly stylized; obscure chanting vocals, high-tension verses and explosive choruses alternating with deadpan storytelling and hypnotic drawls. He utilized fairytale technique, surrealistic juxtaposition of psychedelic detail and plain fact, childhood experience and adult confusion. Like the Beatles, Barrett combined dream imagery and irony with simple, direct tunes, strong, catchy melodic hooks with nonsense rhymes and wandering verses that sound like nothing so much as what goes on inside people's heads when their minds are running aimlessly.
Although some of Barrett's songs seem to be straightforward stories, one always discovers a twist: multiple meanings to a line that belie the childlike wonder of the words ("Gnome"), innocuous lyrics devastatingly undermined with a questing guitar or unlikely special effects ("Scarecrow," "Jugband Blues").
Certainly psychedelia asserted its influence on Barrett's writing; there are descriptions and perceptions one can attribute only to drugs or hallucinatory schizophrenia, but others are strictly the products of his unaffected imagination.
As a songwriter Barrett has been compared with Pete Townshend and Ray Davies. Dave Gilmour echoes that evaluation: "Syd was one of the great rock and roll tragedies. He was one of the most talented people and could have given a fantastic amount. He really could write songs and if he had stayed right, could have beaten Ray Davies at his own game."
Syd's influence on Pink Floyd continued to manifest itself long after he left the band. Carrying on without him was difficult at first, since the public and music business obviously thought Syd was all the band had. Initially Gilmour's style conformed to the Barrett prototype established on the first album, and their music retained Syd's spirit, but their songwriting gradually changed. In the years following Syd's departure he remarked that the band wasn't progressing, and in a real sense this was true.
Even Pink Floyd's three most recent albums to a large extent expand and develop themes and riffs Syd laid down with them in 1967. The point of view Barrett used in his songs, an alternation (and occasional fusion) of second and third persons, still predominated Pink Floyd compositions; pieces of his solos find their way into Gilmour's, tracks from Saucerful rearrange themselves on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You WereHere. Even 1977's Animals displays Barrett's dark humor and takes off on his "Rats" premises. The dramatic mixes Syd applied to the Floyd's early recordings are now magnified by 16-track studios but employ the same technique: whole walls of sound rocket from one side of the room to the other, the guitar careens in and out of different speakers, submerged speech and incidental sounds chatter beneath instrumentals; their use of sound as an emotional tool is absolutely Barrettonian.
The most obvious impact of Syd Barrett-in-absentia has been on the concerns of much of Pink Floyd's music since 1969. They began dealing with the politics of reality in the outside world and became obsessed with the internal world of madness. The lyrics to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" are in perfect context on an album that clearly expresses the band's outrage at the whoring business of rock and roll and its toll on a human being like
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
Black And Pink Damask Wallpaper
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