Thoughts on "The Piper at the gates of dawn"

the rest i can take or leave.

It's great!!!!! Seriously, what's not to love about this record? "Lucifer Sam" is brilliant, "Pow R Toc H" is completely freaky. "Take Up Thy Stethescope & Walk" is great. It's fabulous.

Great album though. "Bike" is totally sublime, and "Interstellar Overdrive" is just magnificent and triumphant (in my ears at least).

However, if you are among those who find the word "twee" a negative one, then don't bother. :-)

Well that's the impression I get from what I've heard: Piper is a masterpiece, Meddle is awesome, Dark Side is very good, Animals is good, The Wall sucks.

It's too deranged to be twee.

But that's the point!

You've got to be kidding, this and "Sister Ray" are about the only time a rock band took on the avant-garde head-on and won!!!!!!

reports suggest this song was the core of their live show, my guess is the reason why the studio version doesn't work is because it isn't long enough. it takes time to get there.

chris cutler ranks barrett as one of hendrix's only contemporaries as an experimental guitar player on the basis of the early live shows, and regrets the total lack of any released live documents...

enter Roger Waters, plodding through it on his bass, the only headless instrument in the mix and far too loud, with the most dull untersallar set the controls for the fog on the moors imaginationless dirge -- presumably providing what film makers call 'continuity'

Oh jeeze louise, it's WAY better than that.

I've just realized that, although I own 8(!?!) Floyd albums (on vinyl!), the only ones I ever listen to are: Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Meddle, Ummagumma.

Wondered if the Floyd title was coincidence and of course found out that it wasn't. Another similar chapter can be found towards the end of C.S. Lewis's Perelandra. I'd like to see someone put together a collection of those snippets of transcendence that show up in mainstream literature. It'd be a fun read.

Is Syd still alive?

that open mind track is nice

i'm always kinda bummed that when i get these floyd related recommends about freakbeat or other era psych stuff, i listen and end up going "yes! see, this is what i wished/hoped pink floyd would sound like."

i was generationally estranged from investigating pink floyd outside of some barret-y stuff. to the extent i heard madcap laughs in 83, 15 yrs before i ever bothered with listening to pink floyd. and having listened, i was pretty good with that.

ma'am this is the Piper at the Gates of Dawn thread

This July album is pretty wild. I dunno if the songwriting is all up to snuff, but the opener "My Clown" is stellar, what a sound.

if only Wimple Winch had hung in there long enough to make an album. they would have blown everyone away blown some lollipop minds.

I might be restating the obvious, but if someone was going to make the effort to track down high-resolution FLACs of a pristine mono vinyl of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn then they should definitely get the same high-res FLACs of the mono The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators

The Louisville Orchestra thing is on Internet Archive but it's a v noisy rip. Anything else of theirs you recommend? I'm really glad to know you're a fan of that Open Window record! I only know one other person who likes it.

― Deflatormouse

oh jeez nice! the only thing i see on there is the track samples unfortunately but it's good to get a bit of a listen. no, i haven't listened to hardly anything of the louisville orchestra from that period... i know it only by reputation...

xp YSI???

https://archive.org/details/lp_the-louisville-orchestra_jorge-mester-the-louisville-orchestra-p

you can dl in 24-bit Flac, rather pointlessly given the condition of the copy they ripped xp

my first copy of the PatGoD was a cassette of the stereo mix I bought early in 1997... I was already OBSESSED with Syd before hearing the album, this RoIO was my intro: https://www.pf-roio.de/roio/roio-cd/cd_full_secrets.cd.html and I had a few other unofficial releases including Magnesium Proverbs, because people on AOL were willing to send me cassette dubs of those for free.

Later that same year I was visiting fam in London when this very luxe mono CD dropped:
https://www.discogs.com/release/706138-Pink-Floyd-The-Piper-At-The-Gates-Of-Dawn

and that CD is the version of PatGoD I grew up listening to
I've never heard the vinyl, don't need to, for one thing I've heard this album enough fucking times. but that CD is perfect and I really can't imagine the 1967 vinyl, or a reissue, being any better.

if you are listening to PatGoD in stereo, you're doing it wrong.

doi doi

and may I say, it is a steal at 4 GBP if anyone wants a physical copy and doesn't wanna shell out for a vinyl RI

in my alternate universe syd moves to germany and makes ten albums for Brain Records that sound like this and he lives happily ever after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPUB9kR2Nc

the paths not taken. there were so many paths that could have been taken! its okay. all of germany took up the challenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rQb81z7ciI

sorry, just one more because so amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pLbikKjDO4

holy moly, never heard "In The Beachwoods" before!

piper stereo isn’t “doing it wrong”, it sounds great too, you all need cheaper stereos

this is them willing Can to exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcjk6cawSwc

this chronological playlist is hard to beat. hours of fun. bring your own acid.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhATozv851coiG9uhBlH9iwW4djrOm7bf

oh the mono mix is a way better record for artistic reasons, i'm not interested in which one "sounds better" from an audiophilic standpoint

"doing it wrong" is flip ofc but the point is if you know the stereo mix and like the album you might LOVE the album in mono, as was the case for me

this is them willing Can to exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcjk6cawSwc

― scott seward, Wednesday, May 22, 2024 12:08 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe it's the organ (?) but this sounds more like Faust to me. you can definitely hear some Can in it but it's the weirder side of Can

pretty astonishing how much of that German scene is drawn from early Floyd, though to be fair I think early Zappa deserves some credit too

... and Velvets. The whole John Latham thing is pretty terrible tbh.

i mean early floyd are the stiffest, unfunkiest band ever, so that's something to consider re: spawning can

i actually loved that john latham thing, it was the biggest surprise on that box set. syd's driest guitar sound in PF and climaxes in his most anarchic playing on record, i think. rick doing pop-AMM.

it's not as good as AMM obviously but nothing is.

not that it's anything like in AMM's league but AMM are the best band of all time

AMM are the best band of all time

real talk

Mason and Waters should just have stayed at home that day tbh.

"In the Beechwoods" is pretty fully formed, too bad Syd couldn't setle on any lyrics for that session

xo lol fair

mason's unstudied improv can be uhh, charming (such as in nick's boogie). waters should have stayed home for sure.

early floyd are the stiffest, unfunkiest band ever

i think early floyd really swings but ymmv. if anything they got stiffer after roger took over. is there anything less funky than "money"?

"but AMM are the best band of all time"

yes, but do you listen to the first AMM album in mono or stereo?

well, the question in their case would be "do you listen to the lp edits or the unedited tracks?" and possibly "where do you program the silence"

i think early floyd really swings but ymmv. if anything they got stiffer after roger took over. is there anything less funky than "money"?

oh interesting! any track(s) in particular you have in mind?

i think gilmour introduces a lot of fluidity and makes them sound less odd for that reason, not necessarily overnight.

nick is more willing to take risks early on, and i like the tentative quality of his parts- i get that from syd and rick too. waters is more prone to playing it safe and spins his wheels a lot.

something like Candy and a Currant bun swings!

Scream Thy Last Scream is like a march, though. So rigid.

i think pretty much all the tracks on PIPER swing. i mean i realize it's not the JB's. there are definitely early psych acts that i think of as clunky or stiff, but i think PF are operating in a cool space between groove and floating on this record

one thing i don't understand is how the end of "Interstellar Overdrive" is supposed to work in mono?

Chapter 24 is one of roger's best bass lines

would think this goes without saying but obviously the mono version of "Interstellar Overdrive" does not feature the roughly synchronized hard-panning

which, to be honest, loses its novelty rather quickly in the stereo version - this trick was refined better by others in subsequent years anyway (Zep for ex.)

Early on, when he didn't know what he was doing, Waters had quite a few good basslines.

yeah his bass playing on Piper and Saucer are fine, its when his inner tiresome dullard comes to the fore that the problems set in

https://themidnightcafe.org/2024/05/23/pink-floyd-have-you-got-it-yet-syd-barrett-archives-1965-1969/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9n5tHvCHDc

no

The guy who compiled that, K1l0h, is a character xxp

you can dl in 24-bit Flac, rather pointlessly given the condition of the copy they ripped xp

oh jeez thanks, your searching abilities are very much beyond mine

Later that same year I was visiting fam in London when this very luxe mono CD dropped:

one of my friends, who's got one of the best ears of anyone i've known, pointed out that the stereo channels of that release aren't identical... one is better than the other, i forget which, so he duped the good channel, and that's the version of mono piper i listen to

mason's unstudied improv can be uhh, charming (such as in nick's boogie). waters should have stayed home for sure.

what i love about mason is how much of his career is him trying to sound like chico hamilton's playing on "blue sands" (and failing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F5fhwiWsyg

not that it's anything like in AMM's league but AMM are the best band of all time

jeez it's been a while since i tried to listen to them, i hated them when i last listened to them but i had no understanding of free improv back then

The guy who compiled that, K1l0h, is a character xxp

― Deflatormouse

oh god you can say _that_ again

AMM's Newfoundland is their masterpiece imho

Still best experienced live tbh.

what i love about mason is how much of his career is him trying to sound like chico hamilton's playing on "blue sands" (and failing):

oh wowwww i'd never heard this before. that's really something. you absolutely nailed it, it is uncanny, undeniable, otm. and yes, this is *exactly* the thing i love about Mason's playing.

one of my friends, who's got one of the best ears of anyone i've known, pointed out that the stereo channels of that release aren't identical... one is better than the other, i forget which, so he duped the good channel, and that's the version of mono piper i listen to

oh my GOD. i have listened to that cd ... *at least* hundreds of times, and i never noticed. I'd ask you to YSI but as i say i have heard that album enough fucking times. what am i gonna do, store it on a hard drive incase i ever want to listen to PatGoD again? Yeah, maybe.

AMM's Newfoundland is their masterpiece imho

Yeah, that one is my favorite. It just has the most devastating emotional arc. I don't know if it makes sense to talk about it in terms of a "masterpiece" - not only because these are ephemeral performances, but also because, while their trio era is excellent and early-mid 90's prob their "peak", it doesn't approach the *monumentality* of the early stuff, AMMMusic and The Crypt. Those recordings are... I don't want to say "challenging", like, don't force yourself to listen to The Crypt when you'd rather be listening to T Rex obv. But I guess they propose a different kind of encounter with the listener than "paying attention", they are more like an ambient sound, only VERY obtrusive. and so what they give you is really singular, more than the trio stuff. the key to those pieces for me is to approach them when i'm the most hungry for them, i guess.

But, Newfoundland - def give that one a try! there's an extended lulling, ASMR-ish section about half an hour in which is gorgeous, with Prevost playing an mbira or something and Rowe producing dense clouds of static. And Tilbury's sustained chords around 50 minutes made me weep uncontrollably the first time I heard it, I mean that's not something that often happens to me when I listen to free improv... like, it is absolutely "masterful" in that sense, just really delicate, sensitive, responsive performances from all 3 of them. Combine & laminates is probably their most delicate, that one is my second fave.

oh god you can say _that_ again

i know 😬

properly this should probably be flac or something but this is what i had lying around

https://www.sendspace.com/file/uxpz54

i will have to check out newfoundland!

I'm listening to it right now!

Thank you, Kate! At a glance, I think this is from the 2007 3x CD, not the 1997 UK mono CD, based on the track numbering "1-X" and bonus tracks:
https://www.discogs.com/release/1060844-Pink-Floyd-The-Piper-At-The-Gates-Of-Dawn

I've only heard the bonus tracks from that one, but the comments on Discogs suggest it's a lemon

Not to go all Hoffman board on ya

gotcha, your '97 is probs better :)

Prompted by this thread, I just listened to Piper for the first time in at least 20 years. Superb. Music that is deep in my bones.

Yeah but was it the mono version?