Roger Waters bass work

Sean Trane wrote: Yes Gilmour was a tad superior muso to the other three (and millions miles ahead of Barrett)

Gilmour definitely is higher up on the rankings but saying that about Barrett is utter nonsense. I don't like Kanye West's music, but damn do I respect his creativity and powerful vocals.

Sean Trane wrote: Dellinger wrote: I do tend to be more on the side of Gilmour than Waters on the fighting side of Floyd, but in the end I do like what they both have done, both together and by themselves, and I do know that they both did their best when working together (and with Wright too, and I guess also Mason, though he does have much less writing credits). And besides, Waters was more of a songwriter than a bass player, and I believe that's the way he thinks of himself, I understand he really took the bass because the band needed a bass player. However, I do like what he and Mason did with Floyd a lot, specially on their earlier albums where they did some really interesting stuff.   As I wrote in this thread http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=103085&KW=roger+waters&PN=2   I tend to side with Waters for reasons stated in there...   I'd tend to agree with you (and Roger) about the best way to see him, but....   I'm not that sure that he took the bass, just to be in the band and write songs... in the early Barrett days, Waters was not all that instrumental (pun intended) in writing songs ... at least not more than Wright would've been... IMHO, of course

Yeah, I had kind of thought about that point of him not being a main songwriter in the beginning. But still, I think Waters did wrote about himself not considering to be a bass player, but a song writer. I think it was in the liner notes from the "In the Flesh" live album. But perhaps I missed a bit about how this came to be... I mean, I must have read it over 10 years ago... perhaps even 15.

sublime220 wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Yes Gilmour was a tad superior muso to the other three (and millions miles ahead of Barrett)  Gilmour definitely is higher up on the rankings but saying that about Barrett is utter nonsense. I don't like Kanye West's music, but damn do I respect his creativity and powerful vocals.

I never held Barrett in high regard, TBH...

Barrett's so-called "genius" was his visionary songwriting angle, but he was hardly a better muso than the other three.

The only Barrett Floyd hit or short pop tune that I like is Arnold Layne... The rest  is mainly utter-nonsense... and outside Overdrive and Astronomy (and to a lesser extent Pow'R), I don't find much to keep in Piper.

Tom Ozric wrote: ^ You, of all people, you don't think anything of Matilda Mother ?? Anyway, this is the Rick I like (I want a Farfisa.....professional duo..........)

I don't remember Mathilda standing out from the pack of Barrett-era short tunes.

here is what I had to write about Piper in 04:

Many Floyd detractors are usually giving the good nod only to this album, because they are fans of Syd Barrett's silly ditties and discard the rest of the group as mere support cast. This is of course immensely unfair, because the other three members, while no virtuosos, where definitely the musical backbone of the group, as cold be then seen or heard in concert way back then. Indeed, their live appearances were about lengthy and improvised tracks and featured way more than Barrett's twee songwriting, no matter how popular it was on the radio airwaves.

To be quite honest, Barrett's so-called genius is not quite as evident as some would have you to believe on this Gates Of Dawn album, as there are no songs that equal the potential of their previous two singles "Emily" and "Arnold". There are indeed a bunch of short songs that were about quaint British/English weirdness, but it's nothing that The Beatles had done a few months before with Sgt Pepper or Magical Mystery Tour and the Fab Four did that much better. Sooooo those thinking these short tracks are pure genius are forgetting this album post-dates Sgt Pepper by three months (June and Sept 67) and you can find the same kind of madness in albums that came out that same fall, namely Procol Harum's debut (Mabel, Garden Fence etc..), Traffic's Mr Fantasy (the non-album singles like Paper Sun & Hole In My Shoe and Berkshire Poppies, Coloured Rain ) and The Nice's Thoughts Of Emerlist (Flower King, Bonnie K, Maggie), although the latter two came out in December that same year, so Floyd might have been influential on these.

Where Floyd does the difference is in the more obscure and longer tracks, thus giving us another facet of their crafts, the live one. While the album-opening Astronomy Domine might appear as another poppish track, the three other musicians do marvels and it's little wonder it will be the only track that will survive in concert past Barrett's replacement and all the way until the release of Ummagumma. Another track is the gigantic Interstellar Overdrive, le lengthy track that sets the tone to Space Rock. Another weirdie is Pow R Toc H, where the whole group plays abstract and often dissonant music, thus showing enough depth to grab the serious music punters' attention. Roger Waters' sole penned track is a relatively instrumental, since there is only one verse (not that good), the rest featuring them playing and soloing.

Sooo discarding the other three acolytes to magnify the ephemeral genius of Barrett is unjust. In this album, the producer clearly chose to go with the Barrett facet, and as such, it was a good commercial choice. I would not hate to see this album reissued with the Emily and Arnold and their B-sides as added bonus! They'd blend in well with the album's madness and would therefore make Syd's Floyd-contribution complete in one disc. Hard to say this album is not essential (historically, anyway), but at least I can say that it's only moderately good.

I think Roger understands his limitations as a musician - he said as much in that Howard Stern interview.  Roger does, however, have the good taste to allow others to carry out his musical vision.  Hand over the bass to the pro and let him/her manifest what's in his head.