Syd Barrett R.I.P.

[vicious_bastard]

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1817952,00.html

Fuck!

[The Vicar]

Terrible news.
Inevitable end to a sad story,
because we really lost him a very long time ago.
Now the shell that remains is gone.
Ah Syd.
You should have just said no.

[tapehead]

I don't think the two Syd Barret Pink Floyd albums were issued in the U.S upon release, and I'm not sure how interested the average Zoner is in '60's psychedelia, so consequently I'm curious to know if the Zone gives a fuck. -Syd's influence, and the effect of his mystique and repuation can be seen on popular music from David Bowie to the Flaming Lips. Although the story of Syd is a bit of a cautionary tale, it's sad his mind never seemed to have come back to him while he was alive. So Syd's gone, even more gone than he was was he was here.

[HollywoodBabylon]

Sad, sad news.

R.I.P Syd.

Your music lives on.

[ZombieZoneSolutions]

Now Syd can truly experience "Interstellar Overdrive" firsthand...
Good luck out there in the cosmos, Syd, now that you KNOW, theres
nothing more to be afraid of... death saves us all. Rest in peace you
wonderful gnome, you...

(Note to fans of psychedelics -- take them, but take them in moderation;
theres a fine line between being entlightened and being fried. Syd,
unfortunately, crossed that line...)

(btw, Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the best Pink Floyd album hands
down.)

[monorail77]

Wow, Syd Barrett died. I was surprised he was still alive actually, I thought he had died long ago. I listened to one of his solo albums once and I thought it was pretty good. I'll drink a saucer full of secrets today for Syd.

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

OK, I love all that 60s Pyschedelia, what little I have listened to of it. I would love to know more Tapehead. I've got the first 2 Pink Floyd albums, the psychedelic ones, and I dunno, I have a hard time getting into Pink Floyd.

These 2 albums feel like they have the most trippy and brilliant songs you can really get into, then about half way through, they just die and you think, 'Oh why the fuck??!!!' so call me commercial, but I just can't get the hang of them. I HAVE played them loads of times too. Interstellar Overdrive just won't fucking grow on me.

So Syd Barrett, what he did for the trippy sound of the late 60s onwards? I dunno, enlighten me. What he did for music? I still dunno, I have a hard time getting into the Floyd as I said, so I dunno if I can call it proper sad news to me that they won't be able to continue, or continue as they would have originally done now that he's passed.

It is upsetting and tragic. One of the apparent legends is gone, and now I just feel that the days of REAL living has gone away even more now. Now I feel old. It adds to this feeling, along with looking at the girls on Newquay Beach and realising that I am virtually twice their age, even though I still feel that I am there, in all the spirit that the 60s brought too.

Yes, darlen, please hand me my crying emoticons, yeah, you can take that Slave outfit off - if you like.

[mistertim]

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on your crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on your crazy diamond.
You were caught on the cross fire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger,
you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Treatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter,
you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

RIP

[DennisMM]

For the best, I'd say. It's been a difficult 30+ years for him and was very tough for his poor family. Being more or less under the watchful eyes of others for half his life must have been difficult. Hard to believe he was 60; he's one of those people who's trapped in time for me, always 20-30 years old.

A bit of sadness: A major Syd website was last updated 7/4/06 and refers to Syd as "very much alive."

[ZombieZoneSolutions]

For the best, I'd say. It's been a difficult 30+ years for him and was very tough for his poor family. Being more or less under the watchful eyes of others for half his life must have been difficult. Hard to believe he was 60; he's one of those people who's trapped in time for me, always 20-30 years old.

I agree on all points. Definately he (and his family) are better off now too.
Death is not really a negative, especially in terms of the release from all
earthly pain, and clearly Mr. Barrett was not in the best frames of mind...

Now, no more pain.

[Leckomaniac]

This is a total bummer.

Its a sad day for music fans.

[Coheed_and_Cambria]

R.I.P. Syd,

Now the diamond shines greater on your way to the interstellar overdrive...we wish you were here, but remember, all in all, your just a brick in the wall!

[The Vicar]

R.I.P. Syd,

Now the diamond shines greater on your way to the interstellar overdrive...we wish you were here, but remember, all in all, your just a brick in the wall!

Well spoken, well said.

Syd deserves no less.........

[Bob Samonkey]

An Effervescing Elephant
with tiny eyes and great big trunk
once whispered to the tiny ear
the ear of one inferior
that by next June he'd die, oh yeah!
because the tiger would roam.
The little one said: "Oh my goodness I must stay at home!
and every time I hear a growl
I'll know the tiger's on the prowl
and I'll be really safe, you know
the elephant he told me so."
Everyone was nervy, oh yeah!
and the message was spread
to zebra, mongoose, and the dirty hippopotamus
who wallowed in the mud and chewed
his spicy hippo-plankton food
and tended to ignore the word
preferring to survey a herd
of stupid water bison, oh yeah!
And all the jungle took fright,
and ran around for all the day and the night
but all in vain, because, you see,
the tiger came and said: "Who me?!
You know, I wouldn't hurt not one of you.
I'd much prefer something to chew
and you're all to scant." oh yeah!
He ate the Elephant

He was a strange man, but I will miss him. R.I.P.

[The Vicar]

Nice, Bob.
Very nice.

[raasnio]

I think an early song he wrote says it all:

Scarecrow

The black and green scarecrow as everyone knows
Stood with a bird on his hat and straw everywhere.
He didnt care.
He stood in a field where barley grows.

His head did no thinking
His arms didnt move except when the wind cut up
Rough and mice ran around on the ground
He stood in a field where barley grows.

The black and green scarecrow is sadder than me
But now hes resigned to his fate
cause lifes not unkind - he doesnt mind.
He stood in a field where barley grows.

R.I.P.

[ZombieZoneSolutions]

^ I love that song.

Ironically, Ogre of Skinny Puppy does a cover of the song with his short
lived "band" Rx. He's tuneless as a singer, but if you know Ogre and his
work, the lyrics of the song make a weird kind of sense; he's kinda like
an aggro Syd Barrett... nice guy too, if you ever get a chance to chat
with him after the bloody syrup and latex is washed off. A real sweet guy.

[Peven]

as someone who's favorite band has been Pink Floyd since i was 16, the news about Syd's passing is especially sad to me. in my late teens he held a near mystical quality of existance for me, being the man who created the band that had become a near religion for me. i was as much a loyal, fervant Floyd fan as any "deadhead" was enraptured with the Grateful Dead, and to this day no other band has ever approached them in earning my reverance. i feel as he leaves this world so leaves a piece of me.

[The Vicar]

as someone who's favorite band has been Pink Floyd since i was 16, the news about Syd's passing is especially sad to me. in my late teens he held a near mystical quality of existance for me, being the man who created the band that had become a near religion for me. i was as much a loyal, fervant Floyd fan as any "deadhead" was enraptured with the Grateful Dead, and to this day no other band has ever approached them in earning my reverance. i feel as he leaves this world so leaves a piece of me.

Syd could not have asked for anything more.

[HollywoodBabylon]

Just a small but interesting footnote in the wake of Syd's passing. There's an interview with his sister which paints a rather different and touching picture of his last decades; a far cry from the 'tortured recluse' that's been painted of him in the past and in the wake of his death.

http://www.sydbarrett.net


A nice read and who knows, maybe he was more contented than people thought. It could be that he done something far more radical than becoming an 'acid' casualty; namely, he simply decided to walk away from it all....without, in the end, an ounce of regret.

[Seppuku]

Thanks for the link Babylon, and also I guess you're the only Zoner here to ever meet him in real life. Though my mum, avid hippy that she is, once hitched a ride with the original Floyd in the mid-60's. They all shared a giant Camberwell Carrot and talked about the Universal Chi.

I've been listening to Barrett and The Madcap Laughs for the last couple of weeks (I'd been meaning to buy those muthas for years, but I actually ordered them a week or two before the man died), and those are things of beauty. What I like about them so much is the fact that it's all played slightly off-key and out of time... It's still music, but instead of just being a slick package, you can feel the songs being formed as you listen. Good tunes too.

From what a friend of a friend told me, who also bumped into him in Cambridge, he was looking a little like Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now around the time he died, but otherwise he seemed normal enough.

I've been re-watching a few pirate videos of the early Pink Floyd, and he was a handsome bastard in his day. Although you can hardly tell through the swirly psychedelic filter they were filmed in. Did he really have purple skin???

Anyway, c'est la mort Syd. Should have been more careful with that axe, S.B etc. I think with the umpteenth up-their-own-arses indie band hitting the top of the charts without ever breaking into a sweat, the music industry could have done with a little bit more of your mescaline-dosed whimsy.

[HollywoodBabylon]

Thanks for the link Babylon, and also I guess you're the only Zoner here to ever meet him in real life. Though my mum, avid hippy that she is, once hitched a ride with the original Floyd in the mid-60's. They all shared a giant Camberwell Carrot and talked about the Universal Chi.

I've been listening to Barrett and The Madcap Laughs for the last couple of weeks (I'd been meaning to buy those muthas for years, but I actually ordered them a week or two before the man died), and those are things of beauty. What I like about them so much is the fact that it's all played slightly off-key and out of time... It's still music, but instead of just being a slick package, you can feel the songs being formed as you listen. Good tunes too.

From what a friend of a friend told me, who also bumped into him in Cambridge, he was looking a little like Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now around the time he died, but otherwise he seemed normal enough.

It's strange, but since his death I've thought alot about that day when (courtesy of my friend) we happen to glimpse him in Cambridge shopping. It still seems a pretty unreal experience, even though it was so fleeting and, all told, just a person walking towards us and then past us in a normal suburban street. But I suppose because it was so unexpected and out of the blue, it made it all the more memorable.

Since his passing, I've been listening to some of his solo stuff as well and found myself really touched by just how fragile he sounds on those recordings. That's why the interview with his sister comes as a pleasant surprise to me; it's nice to know behind the myth of Syd the 'sad recluse' there was perhaps just a man who'd come to terms with his past and was living another, more normal contented life into middle-age and beyond.

[athenabodicea]

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on your crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on your crazy diamond.
You were caught on the cross fire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger,
you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Treatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter,
you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

RIP

[raasnio]

^ I love that song.

Ironically, Ogre of Skinny Puppy does a cover of the song with his short
lived "band" Rx. He's tuneless as a singer, but if you know Ogre and his
work, the lyrics of the song make a weird kind of sense; he's kinda like
an aggro Syd Barrett... nice guy too, if you ever get a chance to chat
with him after the bloody syrup and latex is washed off. A real sweet guy.

I have that song. Skinny Puppy just happens to be my favorite band. I'm also aware of his fondness for Syd's music. I have everything Pink Floyd released, but have nothing of Syd Barrett's. I remember enjoying Opel though it has been many years since I've heard it.

[raasnio]

Oh and didn't Johnny Depp mention interest in playing Syd in a movie?

That'll probably never happen...