Does anyone else out there have a seasonality to their music listening habits? If winter compels dark, icy,
cerebral, introspective selections, and summer more warm, celebratory, and fun offerings than what
does Spring conjure up? For this writer, the answer has always been psychedelia, which suits the vibrant
and temperamental nature of the season (vivid colors blooming, thunderstorms akin to a bad trip,
and so on).
So, as we bid farewell to April today, we’re returning to the psychedelic movement’s very roots in the 60s by spotlighting this performance from Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Much has been written about Barrett’s subsequent exit from the band to live a life of solitude. How much of that had to do with his excessive use of psychedelic drugs? Whatever the case, here we find a relatively coherent Barrett politely tolerating passive-aggressive questioning from an amusingly uptight host who does not appreciate or understand the revolutionary sound Pink Floyd pioneered at the time.
It’s an exciting time capsule of Pink Floyd in their infancy, capturing the brief period before Barrett left and threw the band into disarray. Of course, they would recover to become one of the biggest bands of all time in the following decade, but it’s interesting to speculate what would have happened to their sound had Barrett stuck around. We’ll never know, but we can still soak in this mind-bending performance from 57 years ago and wonder what might have been:
