Customer Reviews

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (40th Anniversary Edition)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first track on the 1967 American release of "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" [Tower ST 5093] is the Syd Barrett gem, "See Emily Play." This is arguably the best song the Floyd ever recorded, but in England it was originally released only as a single. Since this new 2 cd re-release of Piper is the English album, "Emily" is not included. Floyd lovers may prefer to purchase the 3 cd set, "LIMITED EDITION - EXTRA TRACKS" scheduled for 9/11/07 release which includes "Emily" along with other singles from the period.

First lemme say that if you had bought the original US release of PIPER back in the day on the TOWER label, you bought a bastardized version of the album. TOWER dropped ASTRONOMY DOMINE from the original tracking as SEE EMILY PLAY was a hit single in England at the time of its US release. Gotta have them singles on those albums if you wanna sell here in the good ol USA!

The current track listing IS the ORIGINAL EMI track listing as released in England back in 1967.

This kinda reminds me of when EMI/CAPITOL decided to release all the BEATLE albums with the original European track listings.

...also, you really didn't need to wait for this release to get EMILY on disc. The song also appears on a limited edition release called "EARLY SINGLES". It was also released in the SHINE ON Boxset on a bouns disc as well as appearing on the release of "RELICS", which came out a few years back.

Pink Floyd's debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was originally released in August of 1967 and was re-released in two different versions for its 40th anniversary in September of 2007 by Capitol Records.
In August of 1967, Pink Floyd released their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the UK and a month later in the US as The Pink Floyd.
This was the first introduction to a band that would conquer the world in a few years time. The band consisted of bass player Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason (credited as Nicky on this album's original sleeve), keyboardist Rick Wright and guitarist/vocalist and main songwriter Syd Barrett, whom was the mad genius of the band.
The members of the band were in groups known as The Abdabs, The Megadeaths and The T-Set among others until Syd hooked up with childhood friend Roger and Roger's architectural school classmates Rick and Nick and another friend Bob Close to form the group The Pink Floyd which was named after two old Georgia bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Bob Close left after recording Syd's demo of "Lucy Leave".
Throughout 1966, the band were a concert sensation in London's underground music movement and proceeded to get a deal with EMI in Europe and was signed to EMI's US affiliate Capitol under the subsidary Tower (way before the record chain existed).
The band's first two singles were "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" which were both Top 20 hits in England.
Then, the group's entered Abbey Road Studios to record their debut sometime in March of 1967 with producer Norman Smith, whom worked with The Beatles from 1962-65. Ironically, The Beatles were in the same building finishing their classic contribution to rock history Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
All but one track on Piper was written or co-written by Syd Barrett. His songs were whimsical works of art.
The original UK album started with "Astronomy Domine", which was about going into space to explore the universe (strangely this song was eliminated off of the original American vinyl release). Next is "Lucifer Sam", a tale about a Siamese cat. "Matilda Mother" and "Flaming" (which was also left off of the original US vinyl release) follow and are great songs. Next is the first of two instrumentals "Pow R Toc H" which grabs the attention. Next was Roger Waters' first song written for the band "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk" which is a silly song with some excellent jamming.
The second half of the album starts with "Interstellar Overdrive" which was a number the band had played live before signing with EMI and was written by the band. "The Gnome" follows and is about a gnome named Grimble Crumble. "Chapter 24" follows and is my favorite Syd track. "The Scarecrow" follows and is a funny but great song. The album concludes with the whimsical "Bike" (also left off the original US vinyl release in favor of "See Emily Play") which then turns into a collage of sound effects and duck-call noises.
The album showed Syd at his best before LSD caused his behavior to become erratic and unpredictable and his songwriting skills started to go down the drain.
The US version of the album hit the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 200 while the UK version hit #6 in England and the UK version would eventually be released in the US on the double album A Nice Pair in 1973 and properly on CD on its owm in 1987.
The 2-CD set has two different mixes of the album both newly remastered by longtime Floyd associate James Guthrie. The first disc is the original monaural mix that the late Syd Barrett commissioned for the band and has some different mixes on some of the tracks as opposed to the original stereo mix we are familiar with which is on disc two of this 2-CD remaster. The new remaster is ten times superior to the original CD, the 1994 remastered CD and the 1997 mono CD remaster by a longshot.
Excellent start to an outstanding career.

Is it me, or is the critical literature about Syd Barrett a bit misleading? I mean, coming to this album based on what I'd read about it, I expected some kind of quaint, pastoral, twee epic. What it is, however, is heavily improvised, jazzy space rock that is, to these ears, far more experimental than the arena-friendly rock Pink Floyd would later do, post-Barrett, when it rose to US chart success with Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd without Barrett was like Genesis without Peter Gabriel, i.e., less out-there, less ground-breaking. And the sound and approach of Piper at the Gates of Dawn would live on in everything from the music of Oasis, a band wrongly characterised as Beatlesque, but featuring instead the noisy guitars and snarly, British schoolbrat vocals of Piper; Sonic Youth, who took the idea of improvised rock to an extreme; and, most surprisingly, Pere Ubu, whose heavily improvised albums New Picnic Time and Art of Walking really sounded not so much like Captain Beefheart, to whom they were often compared, but like early Pink Floyd if they had hired Willie Dixon as a lead singer. David Thomas, like Syd Barrett before him, clearly improvised not only melodies, but lyrics, after which he refined his stream-of-consciousness into something poetic. This is clearly what was going on in Barrett's work on Piper, and the band were a cohesive unit behind him, with special mention needing to be made of the jazz-level chops of drummer Nick Mason and pianist/organist Richard Wright.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (40th Anniversary Edition) being Pink Floyd's 1967 release and their debut album is a classic example of psychadelic rock and sounds as experimental as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. The album did quite well in the UK album charts and peaked at #6. The booklet is typical 60's psychadelia and the lyrics are quite strange but easy to read. 4/5.

This album is Syd Barrett's masterpiece, and I'm embarrassed to admit I've arrived very late to the Syd Barrett party. 40 years too late! I've been a fan of Pink Floyd for years, post-Barrett that is. I knew something about a founding member who wasn't with them anymore. Fast forward to March 2011, when I read the new biography of Syd - An Irregular Head (see my review), and my curiosity about this man went into (interstellar) overdrive when I saw what he looked like.

The album's a revelation, and what's significant above all is the outstanding talent of Syd Barrett. And clearly, as has been said before, this is an album that grows upon listening. The more you listen, the more you hear, and more and more you love it. Initially, I strongly favored four songs: "Astronomy Domine," "Lucifer Sam," "POW R. TOC H" - Richard Wright plays some seriously splendid jazz piano on this - and "Interstellar Overdrive," and they remain the standouts. All in all, the musicianship and production (Norman Smith) are outstanding, and every song is a wonder worth pondering. Without doubt, the interplay between Wright's keyboards and Barrett's guitar is what drives the whole show. The two were of one mindset, and on this album they soared as musical counterparts.

This 2007 remastered edition includes both mono and stereo mixes. I have tried to compare them to each other, but haven't quite made up my mind which I prefer. Either that or my stereo is not good enough to tell the difference? Even so, each time I play this, new layers reveal themselves. It's a shame that the kids nowadays are not always open to discovering some of the roots of the music they are listening to today. Take Interstellar Overdrive for instance. The ferocious energy that powered this song can only be described as punk! The intro is a full frontal attack. How can anyone listen to this and totally discredit it?

Anyone interested in Syd, should check out video of Syd and Floyd playing Astronomy Domine on "The Look of the Week" on youtube. It's the finest visual representation of Syd Barrett available. Even in black and white, Syd waves his wand, and the magic happens. See Floyd's psychedelic light show and hear Syd's astral guitar playing. It's a downright crying shame that not one full length film is available of one of Barrett/Floyd's historic shows.
An interview follows their performance and witness Syd Barrett, heartbreakingly beautiful and highly articulate.

Pink Floyd's debut THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN really does seem to capture the Zeitgeist of its 1967 release date. As Pink Floyd recorded the album only after a fairly long apprenticeship in London's UFO Club, the album includes complex, sometimes jam-like tracks such as "Astronomy Domine", "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk" and "Interstellar Overdrive", the last one of the true synth rock efforts. On the other hand, PIPER features more straightforward pop tunes, whose psychadelic nature comes from Syd Barrett's bizarre lyrics which find delight in housecats ("Lucifer Sam"), gnomes, and bicycles. This mix of awe of the infinite and a childlike naivete will be familiar to anyone with completely spaced out acquaintances.

Yet that dichotomy in the album, between vast soundscapes and inconsequential ditties, is its weakness. It's no surprise that the album has been overlooked compared to, say, SGT. PEPPER of the same year, which are slightly less psychadelic but possess a great consistency. But that complaint only holds when considering the album as a whole. Track by track, this is all excellent music, performed with a proficiency and legerdemain one wouldn't normally expect in musicians this young. I like to dip into PIPER fairly often.

Various CD releases of this album exist. I'd encourage getting the mono version, as the application of stereo technology to the recording was primitive and it ultimately proves a distraction.

I really like mono. Some of the CD productions don't really sound authentic to me. Too many of them sound just flat and one dimensional. Some reviewers I think call this 'compressed' in a derogatory way, but compression is a good thing: it means balance between the loud and quiet parts. What they really mean is homogenous, I think, flat, one dimensional, etc. And yes, authenic mono should be more. It should be up front with a lot of kick and mixed differently. In the case of this Piper, it literally has completely different overdubs in parts. Some of the other really good ones are Stones Singles collection and Zombies Begin Here. The Zombies Singles sound questionable to me, but it may be the mastering and not the source. A Motown box called Hitsville claims to be mastered off the original 45 rpms, but have not heard. Tull's This Was in mono does not sound authentic to me. Sounds the same as the stereo mix, but in mono, you get nothing more. This mono Pipier is the real thing, as I have the original vinyl and the CD blows it out of the water, and not just coz it has no surface noise. I am just in awe they would even release this as the Floyd seems to want to play down the early stuff for some reason, Point Me, So Nice, Candy and Current, you know...

Not for those who remember Floyd from Dark Side of the Moon, and The Wall.This is early stuff with hints of greatness to come. To understand what they achieved and where they took us, this is a very good listen into their roots.

Before I got this 40th anniversary album, I supposed you must be on LSD to listen this songs...) But second, stereo CD, gives you perfect, new sound, and pleasure while listening it.