FKSpaceman is playing... (7th issue - Special end of August)

TAH-DAH! Syd Barrett Special — The Madcap Still Laughs

Hey hey hey my fellow warriors!

August is coming to an end and since I was silent for too long, here it comes another issue, a special one.

It will be VERY LONG and it boasts 4 songs.

It is dedicated to one of my favourite artist, a real GENIUS whose influence was (and it still is) huge.

There are musicians you listen to.

And then there are musicians you fall into.

Syd Barrett belongs to the second category.

Before Pink Floyd became synonymous with The Dark Side of the Moon, giant stadiums and progressive rock, there was a different Pink Floyd: stranger, smaller, more fragile and infinitely more unpredictable.

At its centre was Roger “Syd” Barrett, a songwriter who seemed to treat songs less like finished objects and more like doors into somewhere else.

His lyrics could sound like children's stories written after a sleepless night. His melodies could suddenly bend in unexpected directions. A perfectly normal sentence might be followed by an image that made absolutely no sense — and somehow made perfect sense.

Barrett didn't really write about the world as it was.

He wrote about the world as it might look if you tilted your head slightly.

So, for this special edition of FKSpaceman is playing…, we're taking four tracks from different moments of his brief but extraordinary career.

Four little trips.

1. Matilda Mother (3rd track of 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' by Pink Floyd - 1967 - EMI Columbia

Let's start with a fairy tale.

Except this isn't quite the fairy tale you remember.

Matilda Mother comes from the early Pink Floyd period, when Barrett was turning childhood stories, nursery rhymes and psychedelic imagination into songs. The result is dreamy and wonderfully strange, with Rick Wright's keyboards floating around Barrett's voice like something heard through a bedroom wall at midnight.

There's something particularly WarEra-like about it, too.

A world full of strange characters, mysterious places and rules that seem to have been invented five minutes ago. A world yet terrifiying sometimes, as in "For all the time spent in that room, the doll's house, darkness old perfume..."

Except here, instead of conquering territories, you're wandering through a psychedelic children's book wondering what the hell just happened.

2. Jugband Blues (7th and last track of 'A Saucerful of Secrets' by Pink Floyd - 1968 - EMI Columbia

And then everything changes.

Jugband Blues is one of Barrett's most remarkable songs because beneath its absurdity there's something deeply unsettling.

It was his final contribution to Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets, and it sounds almost like someone watching himself disappear from the outside.

The lyrics constantly contradict themselves. Barrett seems simultaneously present and absent, playful and devastated, joking and painfully serious.

"It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here
And I'm most obliged to you for making it clear
That I'm not here

And I never knew the moon could be so big
And I never knew the moon could be so blue
And I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes
And brought me here instead dressed in red

And I'm wondering who could be writing this song"

And then comes that extraordinary ending: the song dissolves into a chaotic arrangement featuring a Salvation Army-style brass band.

It's beautiful.

It's uncomfortable.

It's funny.

It's incredibly sad.

And somehow it all works.

If Matilda Mother feels like entering Barrett's imagination, Jugband Blues feels like being allowed to stay there for a little too long.

3. Octopus (7th track of 'The madcap Laughs' by Syd Barrett - 1970 - Harvest)

Now let's go back to the other side of Barrett.

We will not say a world about Syd's ousting from Pink Floyd and what happened to him, let the curious reader still unaware of all of this make his own research

Octopus is one of the songs from his solo album The Madcap Laughs, and it's probably the closest thing on this list to pure Syd Barrett magic.

It's whimsical, slightly broken and irresistibly catchy.

The title itself sounds like something you might discover while walking through a psychedelic aquarium, and the lyrics jump from image to image with the logic of a dream.

But that's the trick with Barrett.

He could write something that sounded completely nonsensical and still make you feel something immediately.

Octopus is not really asking you to understand it.

It's asking you to enjoy the ride.

4. Baby Lemonade (opening track of 'Barrett' by Syd Barrett - 1970 - Harvest

And finally, Baby Lemonade.

The opening track of Barrett, Syd's second solo album, and perhaps the perfect way to close this little journey.

There's a strange mixture of warmth and loneliness here. The arrangement is fuller, but Barrett's voice still sounds distant, as if he's singing from another room — or another planet.

And that's perhaps the best way to describe his music.

Syd Barrett didn't have a very long career.

He didn't produce a huge catalogue.

He didn't become the stadium icon that Pink Floyd would eventually become.

But for a few extraordinary years, he created a musical universe that nobody else quite sounded like.

A universe populated by scarecrows, octopuses, bicycles, madcaps, fairy tales and people who seem to have forgotten which way the road goes.

Maybe that's why his music still feels so strange today.

Not because it sounds old.

Because it still sounds like something that shouldn't exist — but somehow does.

So turn down the lights, put on your headphones, forget about your MU contracts for a while…

…and let FKSpaceman take you somewhere slightly off the map.

Syd Barrett is playing.

And, for fuck sake, go AND listen to the whole goddamn four albums!

Enjoy the trip and stay choooned.