PinK Floyd's See Emily Play on Top of the Pops 1967

When is it coming out????

Seeing these pictures from the broadcast is making me want to see the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_znt0HFfpr0

This was screened at the BFI's "Missing Believed Wiped" event earlier this year. It's in pretty ropey condition (whole sections of the performance are missing), but obviously worth seeing /worth releasing for sheer historical value. The intention was to pass the recording over to the archive restoration team at the BBC, and then hopefully licence it to Pink Floyd for a possible archive DVD release, but AFAIK this has yet to happen. Like a Pink Floyd archive DVD is ever likely to happen anyway.

Any news on this one? This song is kicking my ass so hard right now. They wrote songs with scope and ambition through their whole career but this is one of the few with a very marked pop vein. Wish Syd Barret's brain didn't melt down so quickly.

^truth

Think Joe Boyd would agree with some of that

Well 'Bike' seems to be his favorite song but yes, he also seems to prefer Syd's pop approach than the self-important route they took when he was off:

Question: The recordings that -subsequent Pink Floyd producer- Norman Smith made: would there be any way you would have recorded the material differently?

Joe Boyd: I don't think so. I think "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was a very good record. I think "Bike" is the best track they ever did. So even though I was pissed off at the time, I was very gratified when the band had to come back to Sound Techniques and use my engineer to get the sound they wanted for "See Emily Play." I was expecting the LP, when they finally produced it, to be something that I would not like or something. In fact, I thought it was pretty good. It's very hard to say.

Question: What did you think the group lost and gained when Syd left?

Joe Boyd: Syd wrote three-minute pop songs. Slightly weird pop songs, but they were three-minute compositions. The group, in live performance, would also do these long instrumentals, and they would extend songs of Syd's by these long solo sections. I've heard them doing a ten-minute version of "Arnold Layne." But still there was a structure, and a song. When Syd stopped being the man who wrote all their material, the whole structure of things changed. They became much more of an instrumental group, with the lyrics and the singing as something...it wasn't separate, but like an introduction to the instrumental, a jumping off point place for an instrumental work. I think Roger as a songwriter, and Dave Gilmour for that matter, both...they don't have the wit that Syd had. Syd was a very funny and inventive songwriter, and they don't really have that. But they do have something that probably may be more commercial than what Syd had, a kind of particular almost Wagnerian chord progressions that give their instrumental stuff a unique sound that was present in some of Syd's songs. "Interstellar Overdrive" is much more, in a way, a signpost forward to what they became, than the kind of music he wrote, which is...you can tell a Pink Floyd chord progression a mile away, there's something about it which is absolutely characteristic of them. The fact that it was primarily instrumental is one of the reasons why they can be as famous in Malaya and Brazil and Russia as they were in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Syd and the Pink Floyd, that's one of the extraordinary things about them...there are very few imitators. Pink Floyd kind of exist somewhere on their own.

http://www.algonet.se/~iguana/DRAKE/unterberger2.html

here are very few imitators

uh

NOW!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSusDIz5VyU

OMG

That tape warble . . . It's amazing.

even the video tape is on acid. pink floyd rules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_television_broadcasts

Many early music programs, such as Ready Steady Go and (until the mid-1970s, most episodes of) Top of the Pops are lost, so many significant television appearances—such as The Beatles' last live television performance in 1966, and most appearances of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett—are unavailable.

Any Wiki editors here? Time for an update, I hope....

From what I understand, at the time TOTP had the bands pre-record their song in a BBC studio, then that recording would be played back to a live audience as the band mimes and lip-syncs to it.

Any other surviving TV footage of Syd?

Everyone has seen this one, right? Well, if not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts-2lg5fpQ4

"I'm a little bit too much of a musician to fully appreciate them"

um

THIS RULES

man syd has some serious flop sweat going. must be hot under that big wizard cloak, lol

I don't think the notorious "Pat Boone Show" clip (where Syd just stands there staring into space as the band mimes) has been up on youtube. Parts of it were in the psych episode of the PBS "History of Rock" series, so it is out there.

hmm i feel like i've seen that on youtube, but maybe it's been taken down. that one rules, too.

That tape warble . . . It's amazing.

omg so otm!

I've never seen it. The American Bandstand one of "Apples and Oranges" is common.

xp

there's a little bit of the Pat Boone show appearance at the end of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DlmGwkfTf4

no, that's the american bandstand one again

bump, obv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6KXSb6wuJg

Someone's refashioned the video to make it more watchable, different soundtrack, etc.

nice! that is a more enjoyable experience.

but the other one has actual live Syd vocals.

I just want to hug Doom & Gloom from the Tomb so much! Better than Santa Claus!

http://www.sydbarrett.net/images/66-68/Video/totp3.jpg
I had a guitar book that had this little color still from this shoot, and had always wondered if it was from this famed lost performance. Now we know!

it's their next appearance on totp, still lost

No way! Any idea what song was played?

well Flaming and Apples and Oranges were the next two singles...

er wait I guess Flaming was only a single in the US? what a weird choice.

they may have just been playing "see emily play" again -- research shows they played top of the pops three times in support of that single.

I want Syd's wizard cloak

They appeared on TOTP 3 times, each time playing "See Emily play". I presume the wonderful clip is the first one, that pic is the second and the third (where Syd is dressed badly and losing it, as legend has it) is again missing.

I could be wrong, mind.

At any rate, the wobbly version is effing AWESOME in itself. Really love that bit when the piano is playing all fast and the tape just dies.

my favorite is when the picture drops out altogether and then mwwwwrrwwwaAAAAARRRBLEs back to life with the picture

Yes! The video noise black hole when it all drops out is so beautiful.

and the fucked up tape noises make me laugh. ever since I was a kid i've loved that sound. no idea why.

From what I understand, at the time TOTP had the bands pre-record their song in a BBC studio, then that recording would be played back to a live audience as the band mimes and lip-syncs to it.

I think it was BBC-wide, rather than specific to TOTP. Something about union rules: what was broadcast had to be just different enough from the commercially available recording.

This is why a lot of bands' mid-60s BBC radio sessions are essentially the studio recording with, say, a different vocal track (cf. the Who's BBC version of "Our Love Was," with Daltrey singing lead instead of Townshend). In this instance, it sounds like Syd is singing live over the studio recording, with all instruments being mimed.

I love both versions of the clip, by the way.