THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

The ting that many of the reviewers may have missed is that this album was made before the collapse of Syd and although the lyrics, songs and structures scream acid (especially on the track Bike) most was written by a creative genius inspired by the fantasy works of C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll. The idea is organized madness, where you allow your mind free territory to roam and only cling to pieces of the rules to keep things from going off the edge. Thus the words are weird, the sounds are unique and song structures are 'loose' but hings always come back to focus in the end. The powerful riff that dominates Interstellar Overdrive is completely lost as the band plays relatively atonely for minutes but then it comes back to seal the deal. While drug experimentation may have inspired this work or 'allowed' Syd and the boys to have the balls to release it it is not the core of the record. The core is the melding of the strict pulsing beats that the band enjoyed and played best with the inspired singer-songwriter who does not aim to be better than his contemporaries but just different and new. Syd was just a folk singer like Dylan that did not just decide that electric could increase his impact but that the range of forms available to rock was limitless. One note that no one mentioned is that when this record was being recorded Sgt. Peppers was being recorded down the wall. I am willing to bet that the best album of all time is as good as it is because of the Floyd being down the hall and doing stuff no one had ever done before. The production influence for the Beatles may have been Pet Sounds but the freedom to write what ever came to mind (songs about the circus or your Julian's crappy picture on the fridge) and to use whatever sound you could imagine came from the Floyd banging it out down the hall.