His melodies and chord progressions certainly have anticipated cadences and obey the basic conventions of harmonic resolution but you wont find Jug Band Blues Bm to F#m and ending on F# major sequence in any busker's three chord trick. I mean, there is hardly a sliver of traditional folk vocabulary in Barrett's entire songbook. 'There's nowt queer as folk' as northerners say but it's even odder that his music is so often routinely shoe-horned into the ill fitting sandals of 'Psyche Folk, Acid Folk and Folk Rock' Let's not however bicker about the vase when Cambridge's most celebrated gardener has given us this many beautiful blooms to oggle. #Syd barret madcap laughs full#Either way, a Syd album at full blast is an infallible way to empty your house of unwelcome guests (including termites). Unable or unwilling to play along to a backing track or synchronise with the assembled studio musicians, Syd's songs inevitably suffer from an accompaniment that is either trepidatious or half a beat behind a composer who could never play any number the same way twice. It probably belongs to a tradition of tousle haired bedsit troubadours like Leonerd Cohen, Tim Hardin, Nick Drake et al whose devotees tend to believe he is addressing them alone. The Mad Cap Laughs is not a communal activity either in execution or appraisal. It's also probably the main reason why I seem to have spent the last 30 years listening to singers, when faced with a remit of emoting 'derangement of the senses' without exception or even knowingly, resort to imitating him. His 'deadpan jestery' practically defines the English psychedelic imprint of the late 60's on both popular music and the popular consciousness which is the reason I've reproduced a quote from one of Syd's favourite books (Wind in the Willows) as it could be describing, entirely presciently, the profound spell that Barrett's exquisite delivery could cast on so many receptive listeners. The continuing fetishisation of mental illness that Barrett has come to represent does little service to either his abilities or resilient influence as a songwriter. This one man Lysergic Skiffle sect bequeathed to the world just two solo albums, neither of which could be described as fully formed, coherent or in places, even competent but despite that, somewhere through that thick lo-fidelity fog and cringe-worthy indolent amateurism, there is an abiding light that doesn't look like being extinguished any time soon. There is a still warm drool flecked altar in the Church of Sydology that pilgrims swarm to some 45 years after their Savior uttered his last unwitting sermon to an adoring flock. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.įrom The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham No! There it is again!"' he cried, alert once more. Nothing seems worthwhile but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to forever. "So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end all too soon, I almost wish I had never heard it.
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