CD Review: Pink Floyd’s Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII (2025)

An often-bootlegged, fan-favorite performance(s) by classic rock legends Pink Floyd, the band’s four nights at the Roman Amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy in October 1971 was filmed by director Adrian Maben and released as a concert movie in 1972. It was expanded from 60 to 80 minutes for re-release in ’73, and finally made its way stateside the following year, grossing roughly $2 million at the U.S. movie box office (pretty good for those days).

The performance has released on home video formats several times over the years, and was restored to 4k resolution for an April 2025 theatrical release. For whatever reasons, however, the performance has never received proper CD release, appearing in truncated form on the 2016 Obfusc/ation box set, leaving it up to bootleggers like The Swingin’ Pig and Black Cat Records to satisfy fan demand in the Floyd marketplace with dodgy, illicit (albeit entertaining) CD releases.

Pink Floyd’s Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII

At long last, Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII restores the concert to its full-length across two CDs and long-suffering Floyd fans should be overjoyed. The sound quality is excellent, beating the pants off previous bootleg versions, and although the tracks could have been split more evenly between the two discs (CD2 is a spry 18 minutes), that’s a minor cavil at best. The performance is awe-inspiring, the material falling into the band’s proggy, space-rock period around Atom Heart Mother and Meddle, with trippy performances of the latter album’s “Echoes” and “One of These Days” that presage then-on-the-horizon Dark Side of the Moon.

There are nods to Floyd’s formidable Syd-embroidered psychedelic past with “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun” as well as Ummagumma’s celestial classic “Careful With That Axe Eugene” and the oddball obscurity “Mademoiselle Nobs,” a curious country blues vamp. This is primo grade Pink Floyd at its experimental and innovative best, and a long overdue release from one of classic rock’s signature outfits. (Columbia Records, released April 25th, 2025) Grade: A+
   
Buy the CD from Amazon: Pink Floyd’s Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII

Hot Wax: The Solo Works of Syd Barrett (2023)

In a 2017 conversation with Mojo magazine editor Phil Alexander, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page expressed his admiration for Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, stating that “Syd Barrett was absolutely unbelievable in terms of what he was doing. He took a step sideways and channeled all this amazing stuff. Their version of psychedelia was very, very cool.” The six-string wizard doubled-down on his praise, comparing Barrett to Jimi Hendrix, saying that his “writing with the early Pink Floyd was inspirational. Nothing sounded like Barrett before Pink Floyd’s first album. There were so many ideas and so many positive statements. You can really feel the genius there, and it was tragic that he fell apart. Both he and Jimi Hendrix had a futuristic vision in a sense.”

Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett co-founded classic rock legends Pink Floyd in 1965 with bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason. Barrett was the band’s early frontman and main songwriter, exploring the depths of psychedelic expression in words and music and introducing free-form fretwork, distortion, and feedback to the vocabulary of rock music. For all of his influence, Barrett’s tenure with the band was incredibly short – four hit singles, the band’s 1967 debut LP The Piper At the Gates of Dawn and studio leftovers comprising part of their sophomore effort, 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets – before he was begrudgingly removed from the band in early 1968 for his excessive LSD usage which, along with the stress of the band’s unexpected fame and commercial express, illuminated Barrett’s underlying mental illness.

The Solo Works of Syd Barrett

Barrett was essentially replaced in Floyd by singer/guitarist David Gilmour, a college friend of Syd’s who joined the band in late 1967 as its fifth member. Barrett launched a short-lived solo career with the 1969 single “Octopus,” subsequently releasing his solo debut, The Madcap Laughs, in January 1970. He followed up that album’s modest success (#40 on the U.K. charts) with his sophomore effort, Barrett, released in November 1970. That was basically it for Barrett’s solo career, and after wandering from one fruitless project to another for a couple of year, Syd gave up on the music biz and, by the end of the ‘70s, had retired from public life altogether, moving back into his mother’s house in Cambridge and spending his time painting and gardening, living keenly on royalties that Gilmour made sure he received.

Capitalizing on Pink Floyd’s chartbusting success during the ‘70s and the band’s enduring popularity, as well as Barrett’s growing reputation as a sort of reclusive mad genius, Harvest Records released Opel in 1988, an odds ‘n’ sods collection of unreleased material and alternate takes from Barrett’s 1970 sessions. While all three of Barrett’s erstwhile solo albums have been reissued sporadically over the decades, they’ve all been out-of-print since roughly 2010, leaving the door open for Jack White’s Third Man Records to walk through. As part of the label’s recent “Vault” offerings, Third Man has reissued all three of Barrett’s solo albums on various colors of 180-gram vinyl with remixed sound, packaged together in a gorgeous custom slipcase with new, exclusive artwork as The Solo Works of Syd Barrett. To sweeten the pot, the set includes a 7-inch single by David Gilmour covering two Barrett songs.

Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs

Roughly half (seven of thirteen songs) of The Madcap Laughs were produced by Barrett’s former Floyd bandmates David Gilmour and Roger Waters, with Syd provided co-production credits on two songs. Five tracks were produced Harvest Records headman Malcolm Jones with one song (“Late Night”) produced by Syd’s manager Peter Jenner and overdubbed by Jones. Much of the album is just Syd and his guitar; those songs provided fuller band instrumentation benefit from the contributions of several (uncredited) members of Soft Machine in the form of keyboardist Mike Ratledge, bassist Hugh Hopper, and drummer Robert Wyatt, who were brought in by Gilmour to appear on two tracks. Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley and Willie Wilson, who plays bass on the record, contribute to two tracks.

The album opens with “Terrapin,” a languid, folksy acoustic number featuring Syd’s wan vocals and a simple, yet mesmerizing guitar strum. By contrast, “No Good Trying” is a full-blown band jam (tho’, to be honest, the band was shoehorned in on tape later); the song the sort of psych-drenched free-for-all that would provide inspiration for Robyn Hitchcock and hundreds of other lysergic warriors. “Love You” is a little too Tin Pan Alley for my taste, with rinky-tink piano-play and soft-pedaled vocals, but “No Man’s Land” is full of atmospheric ambience, Barrett’s voice lying strategically beneath the surface of the mix while the band creates a multi-textured wall-of-sound with dense instrumentation and flanged guitars. The album’s lone single release, “Octopus,” is the apex of The Madcap Laughs, a reasonably up-tempo rocker with syncopated rhythm guitar and playful lyrics delivered with a sort of stream-of-consciousness flow.

Lyrically, “Golden Hair” is based on a poem by legendary Irish wordsmith James Joyce, possibly the only bard more madcap than Syd himself. The short, but satisfying song benefits from Barrett’s evocative vocals and a lonesome droning acoustic guitar. The sorta, kinda eight-minute medley/song cycle comprised of “She Took A Long Cool Look At Me,” “Feel,” and “If It’s In You” is proggy in spirit with elegant Barrett vocals that ride the waves of his complex, whiplash fretwork. Mixing the sort of soft-psych sounds that Floyd made its name upon, Syd blends in elements of British folk and American blues music in the creation of avant-garde rock ‘n’ roll. “Late Night” closes The Madcap Laughs, the song’s use of exotic, Eastern musical flourishes, slung low in the mix beneath Syd’s chanted, enchanted vox. It’s a perfect song for 1970, bridging the gap between Floyd’s early albums and the sort of genre-defying experimental rock created later by chance-takers like Led Zeppelin, Genesis, and Strawbs.

The Madcap Laughs wasn’t released in the United States until 1974, packaged as a two-LP set with Barrett, by which time it was overshadowed by the unparalleled success of his former band’s Dark Side of the Moon. Given the relative success of The Madcap Laughs, Harvest’s parent company EMI thought a follow-up album was appropriate. Recording for Barrett began in February 1970 at Abbey Road Studios with Pink Floyd’s Gilmour and Richard Wright helming the sessions, the pair also contributing bass and keyboards while Shirley was brought back to man the drum kit. Rushed out by the end of the year, Barrett failed to chart – possibly because the label didn’t release any singles from the LP – and Syd’s Harvest Records tenure was over.

Syd Barrett’s Barrett

‘Tis a shame, too, ‘cause Barrett is a fine album, not far afield from The Madcap Laughs. The lead-off track, “Baby Lemonade,” would have made a fine initial single, sporting filigree 12-string guitar licks courtesy of Gilmour and a rich, lavish soundtrack beneath Barrett’s spacy, effective vox and psych-influenced lyrics. It could easily be mistaken for a Robyn Hitchcock/Soft Boys track of a decade or so later, displaying how forward-thinking Barrett was as an artist. The mid-to-slow-tempo of “Love Song” is off-putting, with morose vocals to match, but Wright’s subtle harmonium flourishes rescue the song from mediocrity. “Dominoes” could pass as an early Floyd cut from Saucerful, Syd’s madcap poetry and nuanced vocal delivery punctuated by a deeply-textured, often exotic, and delightfully-complex musical backdrop courtesy of Gilmour and Wright.

The blues-tinged “Rats” is built around Barrett’s syncopated, scattershot guitar strum and (seemingly) double-tracked vocals, which are among the singer’s most forceful on the LP. As the musical chaos builds behind him, with swirling instrumentation almost burying Syd’s voice as he sings oblique, nonsensical lyrics like “heaving, arriving, tinkling; mingling jets and statuettes; seething wet we meeting fleck” that somehow work in this context. In the same vein, “Maisie” is acid-blues built on a twisted Delta rhythm with Syd’s drawled vocals outshining Dylan’s in their lack of transparency, Barrett relating some sort of story-song with lines like “Maisie lay in the wall with her emeralds and diamond brooch, beyond reproach.”

Side two opener, “Gigolo Aunt,” is more normal – or as normal as Barrett gets, I guess – with an up-tempo psych-rock arrangement that veers close to respectable, BBC radio-friendly fare in spite of Syd’s opening barrage of hallucinogenic wordplay:

“Grooving around in a trench coat with the satin entrail,
Seems to be all around in tin and lead pail, we pale;
Jiving on down to the beach to see the blue and the gray,
Seems to be all and it's rosy, it's a beautiful day.”
    
Regardless, “Gigolo Aunt” benefits from a scorching Barrett guitar solo, Shirley’s jazzy timekeeping, and various instrumental flourishes added by Wright and Gilmour and would have made for a solid second single from the album. “Waving My Arms In The Air I Never Lied To You” could have been that single’s B-side, the performance sporting a jaunty arrangement complimented by Syd’s wasplike guitar and a full instrumental canvas for him to paint upon. Another lyrically-confusing sonic miasma, “Wolfpack” is maddeningly dense, with instruments barging into the mix and subsequently dropping out as Syd’s otherwise strong vocals hide in the mix behind stunning guitars, soaring bass lines, and the tinkling piano keys that they rest upon.

Barrett closes with the appropriately oddball “Effervescing Elephant,” Vic Saywell’s bleating tuba supporting the song’s overall British dancehall inspiration. Reviewing Barrett for All Music Guide, critic and rock historian Richie Unterberger writes that “it was regarded as something of a charming but unfocused throwaway at the time of its release, but Barrett’s singularly whimsical and unsettling vision holds up well.” I’d agree with my esteemed colleague as Barrett is an altogether enchanting collection of psych-folk with touches of uniquely British pop music that never fails to intrigue, the album revealing hidden secrets with each listening (even after 53 years!).

Syd Barrett’s Opel

A lot of rockcrit types look down their bespectacled noses at vault-scrubbing, commercial cash-in compilations like Opel, but the collection succeeds in spite of EMI’s money-grubbing efforts because of the unique nature of the material that Barrett left behind when he left rock ‘n’ roll in the rear-view mirror. What today’s scribes don’t realize is that albums in the mid-to-late 1960s and throughout the ‘70s were usually only eight-to-ten songs in length due to the limitations of the 33-1/3 rpm vinyl format, artists often dropping two or three worthwhile tunes from the final track list before shipping it off for mastering. The title track here is a great example, the ninth take of “Opel” a keeper, a Donovan-esque folk dirge with haunting guitarplay and Syd’s droning vocals lifting up an otherwise down-tuned performance reminiscent of Nick Drake. I wouldn’t say that the song was 45-worthy, but it’s an otherwise solid opener to build an album around.

 “Clowns & Jugglers,” which includes the Soft Machine guys from Madcap, is a fractured, jagged pop song that preceded XTC and their ilk nearly a decade in advance, with fascinating instrumental backing cradling one of Syd’s most demented vocal performances. The song would evolve into “Octopus” from the first LP, but it’s altogether mesmerizing in this form. To call “Dolly Rocker” pleasantly eccentric would be an understatement, but it fits firmly into the Barrett milieu, with lovely acoustic guitar and Syd’s haggard, haunting vocals. The unreleased “Word Song” is of a similar construct, a man and his guitar and stream-of-consciousness vocals that will have your head spinning.

Another 1968 outtake produced by Jenner and overdubbed by Jones, “Swan Lee (Silas Lang)” offers an intriguing musical premise that could have benefited from a singular production vision and on-time studio backing. The odds bodkins “Birdie Hop” is a whimsical tune with rudimentary instrumentation and production that may have been deemed too damn weird to revisit, but “Let’s Split,” with an effervescent arrangement and performance, should have been taken the distance and afforded a serious take. “Lanky (Part One)” is a lengthy, yet invigorating instrumental track overflowing with cross-current sounds, fascinating musical ideas, and general cacophony (“Part Two” was reportedly a seven-minute-plus drum solo – yikes!) but “Milky Way” is another quirky, whimsical folk-pop song with skewed-but-effective vocals, a gentle melody, and imaginative acoustic guitarplay.        

There are a number of “odds ‘n’ sods” styled outtakes and demos included on Opel, songs like “Rats,” “Golden Hair,” and “Wined and Dined” that offer an interesting glimpse at the creative studio process but which don’t really out-shine those versions from the first two albums. I focused mostly on the unreleased tracks which, by themselves, would have been the foundation of an entertaining and artistically-satisfying album in 1971 or ’72 if fate had deemed otherwise. As Richie Unterberger wrote for All Music Guide, “for several years, the existence of “lost” material by Syd Barrett had been speculated about by the singer’s vociferous cult, fueled by numerous patchy bootlegs of intriguing outtakes. The release of Opel lived up to, and perhaps exceeded, fans’ expectations.” Unterberger deemed the album as “equally essential as his two 1970 LPs,” finding Opel “charming and lyrically pungent, with Barrett’s inimitable sense of childlike whimsy.”  

As swansongs go, Opel wasn’t a bad note to go out on, even if Barrett had clocked out almost a decade-and-a-half previous and likely cared less. As for the bonus 45 accompanying the Syd box set, Third Man dug up a pair of transcendent performances by Barrett’s friend and Pink Floyd bandmate, David Gilmour. The A-side is a cover of Barrett’s “Dark Globe,” taken from a European concert circa 2006, while the B-side showcases Gilmour’s take on Syd’s “Dominoes,” from a January 2002 performance at The Royal Festival Hall. The former offers a reverent reading with ragged vocals as close to Syd’s as Gilmour can reach, accompanied by intricate, lacy acoustic guitar while the latter is delivered as a jazzy fever-dream with shuffling rhythms, manic piano-play, and wiry fretwork. Both are too-brief interpretations of solid choices from Syd’s short catalog, leaving one with the desire to hear Gilmour record an entire album of Barrett songs.

Syd’s Tragic Genius

Barrett’s influence is undeniably timeless, with artists as diverse as David Bowie, The Who’s Peter Townshend, Brian Eno, XTC, The Jam’s Paul Weller, Pere Ubu, The Damned, Robyn Hitchcock and, of course, the aforementioned Jimmy Page all citing Syd as an inspiration on their own music. Too, Syd’s ethereal fingerprints can be found all over late period Pink Floyd albums like Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. As legendary critic and Trouser Press magazine founder Ira Robbins wrote of Barrett in The Trouser Press Record Guide (fourth edition, 1991), “his unselfconscious looniness continues to set a framework in which artists can explore updated acid-rock with little more than an acoustic guitar,” calling the artist “tormented but unquestionably brilliant.”

Barrett was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 as a member of Pink Floyd; fittingly, he did not attend the induction ceremony. Syd died of pancreatic cancer in 2006 at the amazingly young age of 60 years; given the long shadow cast by the genius of this creative gnome, one could imagine Barrett living beyond time. Syd’s tenure with Pink Floyd is documented in the recent film Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, which features interviews with his former band members. With Third Man’s lovingly-created reissues of Barrett’s solo albums as a deluxe box set, the crazy diamond will continue to shine for years to come. (Third Man Records, released September 2023)

Short Rounds: Junior Byles, Guadalcanal Diary, Peter Holsapple & the Textones (2018)

New album releases in 150 words or less…

Junior Byles – Rasta No Pickpocket (Nighthawk/ Omnivore Recordings)
Deservedly a big star in Jamaica, reggae artist Junior Byles is tragically unknown here in the states. Working with producers like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Rupert Reid, and Lloyd Campbell, Byles enjoyed a string of hit singles in his homeland during the early ‘70s. Mental health issues and an attempted suicide sidelined the singer for over a decade, until the recording sessions that resulted in Rasta No Pickpocket. Originally released by Nighthawk Records in 1986 and reissued by Omnivore as part of their Nighthawk label restoration, the album is a reminder of just how good a vocalist Byles was…songs like the gently skanking, socially-conscious “I Don’t Know,” the rhythmic, sing-song “I No Got It,” the Rasta fantasy “Cally Weed,” and the mesmerizing title track showcase the singer’s mellow tones and insightful lyrical skills. Several previously-unreleased tracks sweeten the pot and further display Byles’ soulful vocals. RIYL Bob Marley or Gregory Isaacs. Grade: A   BUY IT!

Guadalcanal Diary – At Your Birthday Party (Omnivore Recordings)
Guadalcanal Diary was often overshadowed by upstarts like Pylon or R.E.M. but, truth is, they were a damn fine studio outfit and even better live rock band. Taken from a pair of January 1998 reunion shows in Atlanta, At Your Birthday Party was originally released independently by the band. Omnivore’s reissue puts the album back in print after almost 20 years, providing wider distribution for this entertaining disc. A band screaming for “rediscovery,” Guadalcanal Diary was firing on all cylinders these nights. From the haunting “Trail of Tears” and the poppy “Pretty Is As Pretty Does” to the raging rocker “Whiskey Talk” and the rowdy, cowpunkish “Watusi Rodeo,” band frontman Murray Attaway and crew crank out 16 wired performances of songs from all four of the band’s LPs circa 1984-1989. Like the college rock radio playlist of your misspent youth, At Your Birthday Party is a very fine present, indeed. Grade: A  BUY IT!

Peter Holsapple – Game Day (Omnivore Recordings)
The voice of the revered power-pop outfit the dB’s, Peter Holsapple hasn’t released a solo album in 21 years (since 1997’s Out of My Way), but he climbs back in the saddle effortlessly with the gorgeous, shimmering Game Day. Holsapple’s deft songwriting chops and emotive vocals have always fueled his band’s best material, and with his second solo effort, he dials up the intensity to eleven. Game Day’s thoughtful, melodic songs run the gamut from the electrifying “In Too Deep” and the rocking “Tuff Day” to the delightfully-morose “Don’t Ever Leave” or the devastating ballad “Don’t Mention The War,” where Peter channels his inner Neil Young. An explosive cover of Buddy Miles’ “Them Changes,” mixed with the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble obscurity “Sing Lady Sing,” provides a new dimension to both songs. Holsapple plays nearly every note on the excellent Game Day, making it a true “solo album.” Grade: A   BUY IT!

The Textones – Old Stone Gang (Blue Elan Records)
The Textones’ Carla Olson put the original band back together (sans Phil Seymour, R.I.P.) for another shot at the brass ring, and their first new album in 30+ years sounds like they never really left the game. The band’s pioneering hybrid of rock, country, and a touch of soul (i.e. ‘Americana’) is much in evidence on songs like the jaunty title track, the thoughtful rocker “All That Wasted Time,” the country-toned “Ride On,” the engaging story-song “Carly Jo,” or the bluesy “Midnight Roundabout.” Guitarist George Callins and Olson make a helluva songwriting team, penning four of the album’s best tunes, but other band members also deliver solid material, creating a cohesive and entertaining overall effort. The Textones’ Old Stone Gang offers a lot of twang and bang for your buck, and if you didn’t know them back in the ‘80s, you owe it to yourself to discover the band today. Grade: A   BUY IT!

Bonus Track:

Bill Kopp – Reinventing Pink Floyd (Rowman & Littlefield)
Music Journalist Bill Kopp is a colleague, writing for publications like Blurt and Goldmine (among others). With Reinventing Pink Floyd, his first book, Bill focuses his insight on the legendary British rock band, exploring Floyd’s early years “from Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon.” His efforts pay off, as Reinventing Pink Floyd provides a deep dive into the band’s years in the wilderness, as they forged a significant career in the wake of founder and guiding light Barrett’s departure. There’s plenty of musical experimentation to be found on ‘70s-era albums like Atom Heart Mother and Meddle before Floyd crafted its signature sound and found superstardom, and Kopp walks the reader through the chaos and creation of a legend. Bill delivers all the minutiae and anecdotes that a Floyd fan demands, weaving a fascinating story of one of the most influential, pioneering bands in rock ‘n’ roll history. Grade: A   BUY IT!

Check out Bill’s own music zine, Musoscribe


Previously on That Devil Music.com:
Short Rounds, August 2018: Gene Clark, Kinky Friedman, David Olney, The Posies, Boz Scaggs, & Southside Johnny
Short Rounds, July 2018: The Damnation of Adam Blessing, Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio, Howlin’ Rain & the Rockers OST
Short Rounds, May 2018: Brinsley Schwarz, Eric Corne, Roger McGuinn & Shuggie Otis 

Long Lost Unicorn Recordings Rediscovered

Back during the early-to-mid-‘70s, England’s Unicorn was plowing a similar country rock-styled vein as pub-rockers like Brinsley Schwarz, but their American West Coast musical leanings were tempered by the inherently British folk-rock sound of primary songwriter and guitarist Ken Baker. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour became a huge Unicorn supporter, picking up on them after the 1971 release of their debut album, Uphill All the Way, and subsequently producing three wonderful albums and opening more than a few doors for them in the industry. With a trio of fine albums to tour under, and an indelible connection to (then) world-beaters Pink Floyd, Unicorn pulled down opening slots with ‘70s-era heavyweights like Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, Billy Joel, and the Doobie Brothers.

Still, none of those Gilmour-produced records – 1974’s elegant Blue Pine Trees, 1976’s more rock-oriented Too Many Crooks, and 1977’s band swansong, One More Tomorrow – performed very well commercially in spite of their overall creativity and excellence and the band would break up. Still, those albums garnered new fans through the years and were ripe for rediscovery when U.K. archival label Esoteric Recordings reissued all three titles in 2017, expanded with bonus tracks and fresh liner notes.

Just when Unicorn fans thought that there would be no more unheard music from the band comes news from Omnivore Recordings that on October 5th, 2018 the label will release the Unicorn compilation album Laughing Up Your Sleeve. The 20-track collection will be released in CD, vinyl, and digital formats and features previously-unreleased demos by the band recorded in Gilmour’s home studio circa 1973-74, with the Floyd guitarist adding his tasty pedal steel guitar to the band’s “Sleep Song.”

 Photo courtesy Omnivore Recordings

Laughing Up Your Sleeve also includes never-before-seen and recently rediscovered photos of the band that document their working in the studio with Gilmour and performing live onstage in London. Liner notes go into detail about the band’s history and the finding of these long-lost recordings with new interviews with Gilmour and original band members. The album was produced by the band’s Pat Martin from the restored original multi-track tapes and are said to feature remarkable sound quality (not surprising, as the band’s sophomore effort, Blue Pine Trees, is as sonically gorgeous an album as you’ll ever hear).

David Gilmour, quoted in the album’s new liner notes, says “one could say that Unicorn didn’t want success quite enough, or that they just weren’t prepared to compromise their music to better fit into the competitive world of popular music. Their music still gives me great pleasure.” The band’s unique blend of American influences like the Band and Crosby, Stills & Nash and homegrown favorites like Ray Davies and Syd Barrett resulted in some incredible, timeless music that is ripe for rediscovery here in the 21st century.

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Unicorn’s Laughing Up Your Sleeve

Bill Kopp’s Reinventing Pink Floyd

It’s only fitting that our final news story of 2017 should be about friend and colleague Bill Kopp. A veteran music journalist and critic, Bill has written for publications like Blurt magazine, Goldmine, Prog (U.K.), Ugly Things zine, and Record Collector (U.K.), among others, as well as tending to his own excellent Musoscribe blog. Now Kopp has another lofty credential to add to the list – his first book!

On February 15, 2018 Rowman & Littlefield will publish Kopp’s Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon. In celebration of the 45th anniversary of the band’s groundbreaking Dark Side of the Moon LP (released in ’73), Kopp takes a look at Floyd’s reinvention after the departure of band founder Barrett as well as the musical evolution of the band that would result in the aforementioned breakthrough album that would subsequently spend an unparalleled 741 weeks on the Billboard charts (that’s better than 14 years!).

Kopp explores the band’s attempts to establish a fresh musical identity and style after the loss of their brilliant band leader, including the obstacles, experiments, creative missteps, and eventual development of the influential “Pink Floyd” sound that would result in a handful of bona fide classic albums (Wish You Were Here being my personal favorite). Kopp worked from archival interviews and reviews to put together a history of the band circa 1968 through 1973, adding information glommed from exclusive interviews with folks like Steve Howe (Yes), Jerry Shirley (Humble Pie), Davy O’List (The Nice), Robyn Hitchcock, and many others.

The result is a tome that every Pink Floyd fan or any lover of the classic rock era is going to want on their bookshelf! You can pre-order Revinventing Pink Floyd right now from Amazon.com...

CD Review: Tonite Lets All Make Love In London (1967/2017)

By 1967, British director Peter Whitehead was building a reputation as a documentary filmmaker with an eye on youth culture. His short 1965 film Wholly Communion featured footage shot at the International Poetry Incarnation in London with readings by Beat poets from both sides of the pond like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Michael Horovitz, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among many others. The event drew an estimated audience of 7,000 people and is credited with jump-starting the British literary underground during the 1960s.

Whitehead followed the modest success of Wholly Communion with his 1966 film Charlie Is My Darling, which was produced by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. Initially intended as a sort of ‘screen’ test for the band, video footage was shot during the Stones’ second tour of Ireland in September 1965 and premiered at the Mannheim Film Festival in Germany in October 1966. The film was not released commercially at the time due to a legal brouhaha between the Stones and Allen Klein, and all prints disappeared during a subsequent burglary in Oldham’s office. The film footage would reappear in the early 2000s when rediscovered by American director Mick Gochanour, who pieced together the 2012 release Charlie Is My Darling – Ireland 1965, sharing the director’s credit with Whitehead.

Tonite Lets All Make Love In London

Undaunted, Whitehead dove headfirst into what would become his signature film – Tonite Lets All Make Love In London – a journey into the heart of ‘swinging ‘60s’ London. Combining live performances by Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones with interview footage of U.K. celebrities like John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Christie, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Caine, and others, the film captured the zeitgeist of London circa 1967. Due to Whitehead’s association with Andrew Loog Oldham, the film’s original soundtrack album was released on the impresario’s Instant Records imprint, a subsidiary of Oldham’s legendary Immediate Records label.

In celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary, Charly Records UK has reissued the soundtrack for Tonite Lets All Make Love In London on CD, bringing the long out-of-print album into the modern era for the first time in over two decades. The film’s soundtrack is an odd bird, to be sure – part fish and part fowl as one might say – mixing songs by Pink Floyd, rock ‘n’ blues singer Chris Farlowe, folkie Vashti Bunyan, and the Small Faces (all Immediate label artists) with spoken interviews with folks like actors Michael Caine and Julie Christie, Mick Jagger, pop artist David Hockney and, of course, Oldham himself, among others. The results are mixed, but usually entertaining.

Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive

As for the album’s music – the main reason you and I, dear reader, are both here – the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd performance of “Interstellar Overdrive” acts as the heart of the soundtrack, which is mostly comprised of previously-released Immediate label hits. Recorded over two sessions in January 1967 and paid for by Whitehead, the song offers a psychedelic-drenched glimpse at the band before the release of their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The all-too-brief three-minute snippet of the 17-minute performance of “Interstellar Overdrive” provides a rush of sonic ecstasy with brilliant ambiance matched by Barrett’s otherworldly guitar licks.

Chris Farlowe, a blue-eyed soul singer who made an early career out of Stones covers before moving on to jazz-rock pioneers Colosseum and, later, sonic terrorists Atomic Rooster, provides the other musical highlights here. His versions of “Out of Time” and “Paint It Black” – both big U.K. chart hits – are wonderfully sublime, Farlowe’s performances mixing Jagger’s soulfulness with the electricity of Tom Jones to forge a beautiful, original sound. The Small Faces’ “Here Comes The Nice” is a delightfully wry slab of winsome ‘60s pop while “The Changing of the Guard” by the Marquis of Kensington (a studio project of Kinks manager Robert Wace and producer Mike Leander) is a whimsical Ray Davies’ sound-alike. British folk singer/songwriter Vashti Bunyan’s ethereal “Winter Is Blue” and Twice As Much’s beautifully baroque “Night Time Girl” (the songwriting duo of Dave Skinner and Andrew Rose) are only available on the Tonite Lets All Make Love In London soundtrack.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Whitehead’s film captured perfectly London’s mid-to-late ‘60s apex as the center of art, fashion, and music on the world stage. Remastered from original master tapes found in the CBS vaults, the soundtrack for Tonite Lets All Make Love In London is an important artifact of a fleeting moment in pop culture history, its music and interviews (including Allen Ginsberg’s brilliant reading of his poem from which the film takes its name) offering a glimpse into the window of the increasingly-distant past.

Quintessentially British, this album would certainly appeal to any anglophile or collector of ‘60s-era ephemera, but it also offers some choice musical morsels for the rest of us. My only complaint is the exclusion of the full 17-minute performance of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.” With the CD’s running time falling short of 40 minutes, it could have easily been tacked on. Still, with the movie itself seeing re-release later this year, Tonite Lets All Make Love In London is the soundtrack to an influential and entertaining era. It’s also one of the first steps in the restoration of the Immediate Records back catalog to CD this year by Charly Records UK, which ranks highly in my book. Grade: B+ (Charly Records UK, released June 2, 2017)

Thanx to Shindig! music zine, whose July 2017 article on Tonite Lets All Make Love In London provided a lot of valuable information for this review...

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Tonite Lets All Make Love In London

New Music Monthly: November & December 2016 Releases

November is upon us and with it a dearth of new album releases at the end of the year. This month we're giving you, our readers, a 'two-fer' with both November and December release dates; there will be no column next month. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some great music coming our way, including a fine new album by the legendary Glenn Hughes, an outstanding tribute album for one of our favorite rock 'n' roll singers, Frankie Miller, a bunch of stuff from the Zappa archive, and cool new blues-rock discs by Greg 'Stackhouse' Prevost and the Rolling Stones...dig it!

NOVEMBER 4 
Glenn Hughes - Resonate CD/DVD   BUY!
Jim James - Eternally Even    BUY!
Lambchop - FLOTUS (For Love Often Turns Us Still)   BUY!
The Pink Fairies - Naked Radio   BUY!
Public Image Limited - Metal Box   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Chicago '78   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Little Dots   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Meat Light: The Uncle Meat Project/Object   BUY!

NOVEMBER 11 
The Band - The Last Waltz (40th Anniversary Edition) BUY!
Frankie Miller - Frankie Miller's Double Take  BUY!
Pink Floyd - Cre/ation: The Early Years, 1957-1962  BUY!

NOVEMBER 18 
Rory Block - Keepin' Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White   BUY!
Jethro Tull - Stand Up (The Elevated Edition)  BUY!
Metallica - Hardwired...To Self-Destruct  BUY!
R.E.M. - Out of Time (25th Anniversary Edition)   BUY!
Mike Zito - Make Blues Not War    BUY!

NOVEMBER 25 
Greg Prevost - Universal Vagrant   BUY!

DECEMBER 2 
The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome    BUY!

Album of the Month: Greg Prevost's Universal Vagrant is the singer, songwriter, and guitarist's second solo album after years of fronting garage-rock legends the Chesterfield Kings. The follow-up to 2013's acclaimed Mississippi Murderer LP, Universal Vagrant is another white-hot slab of ramshackle blues-rock that will rattle the teeth right out of your mouth. Whereas many otherwise earnest blues-rockers depend on covers of the classics with which to frame their fretwork, Prevost penned six of ten songs here, and they're barely distinguishable from his inspired covers of tunes by Muddy Waters, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and others. 

Pink Floyd’s The Early Years 1965-1972 box

You wouldn’t think that there’d be much of a market for multi-disc box sets that run hundreds of dollars, but the major labels keep crankin’ out these things, so I guess that somebody’s buying them. As P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute!”

I have to admit, though, that sometimes these things are mighty sweet…take a gander at Pink Floyd’s The Early Years 1965-1972, a wallet-whopping 27-disc box set that is receiving the Dylan treatment from Legacy Recordings on November 11th, 2016. Swaddled in swanky deluxe packaging, The Early Years box offers ten CDs, eight Blu-ray discs, nine DVDs, and five 7” vinyl singles packaged in seven individual book-style volumes, all of the discs graced with a wealth of unreleased music.

This absurd mix of quality and quantity doesn’t come cheap, Bunkie, and The Early Years is gonna set you back seven bills…six and a half if you’re lucky…but did I mention that the box also includes over 40 pieces of Floyd memorabilia such as posters, flyers, tour programs, etc to drool over?

With unreleased songs, BBC radio sessions, remixes, outtakes, and alternative versions, The Early Years provides almost twelve freakin’ hours of audio content from 130+ tracks as well as live and TV performances comprising better than fourteen hours of audio-visual thrills. The box highlights the evolution of the band from psychedelic rockers to prog-rock legends via seven hours of previously-unreleased live audio and five-plus hours of rare concert footage.

The five 45s included in the box are presented in replica sleeves and feature such awesome A-sides as “Arnold Layne,” “See Emily Play,” “Apples and Oranges,” “It Would Be So Nice,” and “Point Me At The Sky” as well as groovy Bs like “The Scarecrow” and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.”

For those of us of, well, more ‘modest’ means (i.e. we’re not freakin’ millionaires…), Sony Legacy will also be releasing the two-disc “highlights” set Cre/ation – The Early Years 1967-1972. Also scheduled for November 11th release, Cre/ation features 27 tracks culled from the larger box set, 19 of ‘em previously unreleased, offering fans a budget-priced ($16 on Amazon as I type...) way to experience the tasty rare tracks, BBC performances, and live recordings included in the massive Floyd The Early Years box set.

Hidden in the fine print of Sony’s press release for this box set it says “each individual book-style package will be released separately early in 2017,” save for a bonus disc exclusive to the box, so we fans may be able to buy “ala carte” from the Pink Floyd menu early next year. And can a 40-disc “later years 1973-1995” box set be far behind? Buy your flavor of Floyd via the Amazon.com links below...

I won the lottery, give me the full Pink Floyd experience: The Early Years 1967-1972 box set

I found a twenty on the street, give me a little taste of the Floyd: Cre/ation – The Early Years 1967-1972 two-disc set