THE BEST OF THE PINK FLOYD

I recall buying this old LP in the 1980's from a place called the Record Cellar, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time I had been collecting anything I could possibly find from Pink Floyd and when I came across this "best of" collection, I noticed that it had songs on it I had never heard before, except for some from the Relics release. I later found out that this collection was made up of mostly music from singles that were released in the late 1960's. These were incredibly hard to find back in the 1980's, so I cherished this album until the release of their 1992 boxset "Shine On." To my knowledge, this LP was only released in the Netherlands and is only missing Point Me At the Sky.

Since Pink Floyd's 1960's singles are more readily available in newer formats (online or CD), this 1970 LP is basically a collectible nowadays. The music is, as you might guess, in a similar vein as their debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. They are all short, psychedelic-pop songs, chiefly of Syd Barrett's writing. It includes their famous Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, plus the Beatlesque Wright-penned It Would Be So Nice and Waters' chilling Julia Dream, among others. Although Gilmour is pictured on the cover, he only briefly makes appearances on the few post-Barrett songs on this compilation.

Musically, Pink Floyd would make a more significantly important mark on progressive rock later in the 1970's. This, in comparison to their later work, is more or less of value to historians of the group and of late 1960's psychedelia and proto-prog. Further, the group made more interesting work than the singles they released, and this can be found on their studio albums of the period. Thus, I can only recommend to collectors and completionists. Therefore, although I still cherish owning this, it only merits two stars.