Well, it was already a bit shit, wasn’t it?
But somehow the sight of that gurning pantomime dame announcing the demise of Christmas 2020 has really put the nail in the coffin.
Let’s get high…
The Pink Floyd
On a grimy, pasty afternoon this week, I put this on again for the first time in ages and I was immediately gripped by what a strange, adolescent piece of garish psychedelia it was. I’d forgotten just how damn exciting it is.
I could not begin to imagine what it must have sounded like to a largely unprepared population at large. But then a quick search of YouTube, turns up this:
Apart from the only clip I can find online of Syd performing his song (and clearly, therefore, brilliant), it does do a pretty good job of showing the blank incomprehension of an ill-equipped public, embodied by a by-no-means hostile, though clearly not where-it’s-at Hans Keller (“I don’t want to prejudice you against them, but four quick points I want to make…”)
The whole filming of a song about psychedelic exploration in black and white is also rather symbolic of the general unreadiness of the BBC, Robert Robertson and Hans Keller for what they were witnessing.
(I’m also very keen on the whole “The Pink Floyd” thing…)
The interview afterwards is great fun too, with Roger Waters and Syd Barrett displaying the nerdiest of cut-glass accents, but still managing to look and sound like oiks next to Herr Keller. I can’t bring myself to dislike Keller – he’s just simply from another age. It’s bizarre to think that at the time of the interview, he’s only 47 – an age I myself look back at wistfully…
This is my favourite part of the whole weird exchange
Keller: I happen to have grown up in a string quartet which is a bit softer… so why has it got to be so loud?
Water: Well I don’t guess it has to be, but I mean that’s the way we like it, but we didn’t grow up in a string quartet and I guess that could be one of the reasons.
There’s also this version online, which is live and was filmed sometime after Syd had gone missing, but which is possibly even more exciting. It’s poorly edited, a bit trebly and has been cut clumsily in a couple of places; but still the energy of Waters and particularly Nick Mason behind his kit, really owns the song. In my sloppiness, I’d always associated the arrival of Dave Gilmour with the point at which the band lost their groovy “The” and moved onto grown-up Rock.
Clearly, I’m an idiot.
Partly Porpoise 