ALBUM REVIEWS: This Is the Sound That Crazy Makes

Typically, I do the best I can to avoid music made before 1977 that isn't already irredeemably cool. Obviously, certain genres are innocent of this embargo - Proto Punk's is, as the kids are saying, so necessary because without it, there wouldn't be a Punk (or a Post Punk for that matter!) Bands like The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and David Bowie will always, always be hip and/or relevant (at least their first few releases). And of course, the early seventies is chock full of obscure-but-great artists (The Modern Lovers, Faust, Can, the New York Dolls, etc, etc). But all of those guys and galls still fit into a similar mold - they're all pioneers, or produced by pioneers, or fans of pioneers. They all make new and exciting music.


(I challenge you to listen to White Light/ White Heat and not get a bit of a music hard on).

One can trace the weight of their influences into the eighties and nineties, and even today. Most of those great bands are considered great today because, throughout the ravages of history, groups of music nerds banded together and stood by their favorite bands, hoisting their original non-re release vinyl copy of Faust IV up for the world to see, insisting upon its importance year after year after year as its imitators redirected, revamped, and rehashed its iconoclastic energy. Some people today who crank Green Day LPs have no idea that that artistic statement has already been made - thirty years ago. From the Sex Pistols! (Well, as the record store clerk Dick from 1997's brilliant snob film High Fidelity assures us, there and from Stiff Little Fingers' debut LP.) And when the Sex Pistols were huge in the late seventies, many a Briton had no clue that Malcolm McLaren plagiarized his 'idea' of children-anarchist-destroyers from across the Atlantic: from Richard Hell, and the New York Dolls, and those progenitors of a revolution.

And on it goes, the story of pop music - one plagiarism after another. But after all, it was John Lennon who told us that it's "not who you rip off, it's how you do it". And at the end of the day what's wrong with borrowing from your favorite bands? Chances are they're going to intervene in your sound, anyway. The general consensus is, let 'em in...as long as they belong there. As long as they're good, recognized as such by critic and fan alike. You'll get a hell of a lot farther impersonating Television and Gang of Four than Nickelback, that's for sure (unless, of course, you want any money; then by all means, go for Nickelback).

But who 'belongs there'? Who makes the cut, what artists rise above their worthless, prattling peers as shining examples of 'what to do' with musical instruments? As far as history's concerned, all significant influences can be traced back to their origins. The Clash were ultra important. The Velvet Underground inspired everything worthwhile (as did the Pixies, but that's a later blog). Like the Velvets and the Pixies, there are a number of bands that did no wrong - that were as perfect as perfect gets in pop music, that inspired only good groups, that wrote only the best music for as long as they were relevant. As far as the 1970s are concerned, this refers to an extremely long and diverse list.

But then there are those groups that the music community has a long history of enmity towards - that were considered so god fucking awful, it provided the original impetus for punk to rise up and sweep its bloated, rotten corpse off the foyer of public consciousness for good. I'm talking, of course, about rock n' roll. You know their names; they are the most notorious offenders, responsible for the most egregious of musical crimes. Led Zeppelin. Van Halen. Cream. Any band that toured between the years 1963 to 1975 and utilized "tasty licks" in one (or all) of their songs. The kind of bands that Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous so perfectly lampoon - bands with members who couldn't care less about art; who write songs strictly about getting laid, and the trauma of loosing a lay - or maybe songs just about the plain ole joys of rock n roll. Bands with 'groupies'. Bands with masturbatory solos, histrionic front men, stadium filling numbers you hear day in and day out on every Classic Rock station on the planet, and who mysteriously conjure the smell of bad pot on every lawn of every arena their now-skeletal authors 'rock n roll all nite' with all the sincerity of wet mops.


(I've had a bad day and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man.)

And when it comes to rock n' roll crimes, a list of Progressive Rock groups from the early seventies reads like a Most Wanted Chart. Today Prog Rock's ornate orchestrations crackle, like old skin, with age. Genesis's once (probably) captivating excursions into the prog frontier now just sound, well, 'old'. Jethro Tull's lyrics - once intensely far out, I'm sure - are now laughably trite. When Led Zeppelin - while still respected - flirt with the Prog vangard (see: Achilles' Last Stand, Stairway to Heaven), there is no system of measurement to quantify its awfulness.

And who among their ranks is more guilty of sheer crap than that giant green fag dragon of a band, Pink Floyd? While the Punk revolution swept over Britain in the late seventies, the 'Floyd went marching blithely on, bloating to its most superfluousness while the rest of the world set out to trim the fat. And then, like the poor fat bastard who piggies himself to death in David Fincher's Se7en, Pink Floyd got so specious and over the top that they killed guitar music for an entire decade (I'm looking at you, 1979's The Wall!)


NO.

The rumor has it that, when Sid Vicious applied for a job with the Sex Pistols, he was wearing a Pink Floyd tee that the adventurous lad had carved his own commentary into; right above the large, translucent letters that spelled out the band's name, Sid had etched the words "I" and "HATE". These once harbingers of psychedelia had clearly mutated into something sinister - something boring, and up its own ass, to boot. Dark Side of the Moon may be one of the highest selling rock albums of all time, but God bless it if it ain't the worst piece of shit to come out of 1973. Humorless and entirely lacking any semblance of humility, both Dark Side... and The Wall symbolize almost everything wrong with "rock n roll" in the 70s.

BUT I'll be damned if the 'Floyd's debut isn't absolutely dazzling.

All of these people are on heavy drugs.

Before the bloat, before the gloat, and before the goat, 'The' Pink Floyd's debut album sounds (excuse the Space Rock analogy) light years away from its creators' later work. Gone are the constant daddy issues, the obsession with death and insanity and socialist politics - the twenty minute track lengths, the indulgent solos, and the flying fucking pigs. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was penned way before David 'rock out with my cock out' Gilmour ever joined the band - and in his stead (or rather, before his stead) stands tall a handsome, fashionable, black haired man with an instantly compelling voice, a way with child-like imagry, and an unbelievably out-there guitar style. This man is also BAT SHIT FUCKING NUTS. His name is (was) Syd Barrett:


(Meet Crazy McCrazerson.)

And Syd made the band, pure and simple. The minute the sinister chromatic bass riff from Lucifer Sam creeps out of the speakers, any memory of late not-great Pink Floyd is immediately forgotten. First and foremost, Piper is scary; horrifying, in fact. A kaleidoscopic stumble through a forest in the blackest of midnights, high as a kite on LSD. And what's funny, half of the songs on the album could pass (on paper) as kid's songs. Playful lyrics, jaunty music - yet lurking behind even the twee-ness of Scarecrow lumbers the big hulking acid-soaked terror that only fully reveals itself in numbers like Pow R. Toc H. and Interstellar Overdrive (the former creaks with enough dissonance and drone guitar to make me nearly wet myself).

Syd Barrett was a mystery to all - its unclear whether or not he was even conscious of his own genius, or really anything for that matter. Stories of his madness range from mild to absurd - and it becomes difficult to remain skeptical submerged in the Psychedelic dementia that is Piper at the Gates of Dawn. An excellent, excellent album that (nearly) excuses the band from all of its later-day transgressions.

It doesn't take a genius to work out the math at play here - Pink Floyd plus Syd Barrett equals good. Pink Floyd minus Syd Barrett equals wanky. So what was good about this situation in the first place? Obviously, Syd - this higher level reasoning led me to Barrett's first (and really only mentionable) solo album, darkly and promisingly entitled The Madcap laughs. Although at the time of recording, the worst Syd stories had come to pass, and he already been kicked out of the band and replaced by Gilmour, the songs here simply do not fail to astonish.


(The Madcap laughs, indeed!)

The album rolls along with all the consistency of(ha ha ha)a schizophrenic. The slow seduction of Terrapin is banished away from the mind's eye as the album's second track, No Good Trying comes scooting across the stereo. The Madcap's lack of consistency gives the work as a whole an unstable edge, as if the whole thing might collapse together any moment. Syd ranges from quietly admiring (Terrapin) to bizarrely poetic (Golden Hair). The best of the album sound like a Who concert unplugged - the hit Octopus rambles distinctly British nonsense and demonstrates Barret's pop genius.

Yet its the fifth track - Dark Globe - that really stands out from its brothers and sisters as a true work of art. What could be meant for the members of 'Floyd, or just the entire world, this jarring acoustic track will send shivers down any spine. Here Syd is hopeless, dejected, and altogether insane; the man's neurosis on display so vividly one cannot help but feel guilty just for listening to it for entertainment purposes. The Madcap Laughs is a masterpiece, in its own right.